I’m back in Africa. But let’s go back just a few days. Hey, there’s a guy balancing four wine glasses, full, on top of each other, on his head. Everyone laughs. And cheers. That is one enormous and flat head. This, on an old cobblestone road in front of the Hotel Sultana, an otherwise non-descript […]
(More) Turkish Delight (with a magic genie lamp this time) Read More »
We were sitting around the couch the other evening and Liz, all 12 years of her, like she was pulling it out the empty space around her, said the sort of thing that can linger in a room a lifetime. “You know,” she said. “World War II was just awful.” I suspect she meant that
The boy in the striped pajamas, and a 12-year-old girl Read More »
It was early, today, morning coffee at the kids’ school, and I missed most of it because work (WORK!) got in the way, and by the time I was explaining to the mother across the table from me that WORK! was pressing because I was preparing to give a public address back in Canada, it
Dad, shutting down? What?! Read More »
So, the boy arrived home from the school this week wearing his swimsuit. He had lost his shorts. And those other shorts, also. Yes, those other shorts. The conversation went like this. “How was your day at school, son?” “I lost my shorts.” “Oh.” “And my underwear too.” “That’s great Jon.” The swimsuit my son
My son lost his shorts. (But we’re still fine parents.) Read More »
It’s Saturday morning in Africa and some of us, jet-lagged, are sleeping in. At least to the extent that’s possible around here. Hannah opens the front door and yells out, “It’s time for breakfast!” She’s yelling to her brother, who is with his best friend, a boy from school who, last night, had his first
It’s the other evening and, as we often do, we’re playing soccer on our front lawn – the dog watching, along with the cats, along with African birds in the 40-foot palms. The boy, naturally, likes to show off by putting the ball in the big net in the most creative and dramatic ways he
Back to school. Where there is (no) truth to be discovered. Read More »
So, after some months in our Canadian home, we’re back in Africa. The commute over the Atlantic was non-eventful with the exception of two notes. One is the passing of Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and so-called “poet-laureate of medicine,” a man rich in words and spirit, both. I saw the report on the BBC somewhere
We’re back in Africa. With the cats. (And that Very Great Cat.) Read More »
I’m at the Y and it’s the news on TV and the story that will still take some time to play itself out, the one of Alison Parker and Adam Ward, the two slain journalists from Virginia, the story that has shocked, at least to the extent that anyone can be shocked anymore. Not that
Americans need to take back their lives. Go to Washington en masse. Read More »
