Building Sustainable, Local, Equitable, Economies
Sri Lanka: Hard and Hopeful Land. February, 2025.
I come from Minnesota. USA, a region of the world where February is so cold, artists create shanties on frozen lakes and people flock to see their creations. They build ice castles and call it a carnival. People drive trucks onto ponds, dress in five layers, drill holes in the ice, put down a line and wait. Sri Lanka’s rainforest, screaming monkeys, wild peacocks, elephants, tigers, and aqua sea were fantastic to me. I gawked at goats on city streets, stole photos of narrow lanes filled with tiny shops, goods piled to the ceiling. I was in awe of a woman my age carrying bales of twine...
Order, Chaos and the Desire to be Free. Egypt, January 2025
For the ancient Egyptians, the universe was composed of dualities fertile and barren, life and death, order and chaos. (1) A new museum has been built to showcase Egypt's ancient artifacts yet no structure exists to honor our desire to be free (2) People on Cairo streets greeted us: Welcome to Egypt! Outside of pyramids, museums, and Nile Cruises—there were few tourists and very few from the US in January 2025. People would guess where we were from: Russia? The UK?” We came to Egypt because a scholar I respect had an apartment in Cairo she was renting out. I was eager for the...
Icelandic Winds
Iceland is a land of ghosts and ghouls, sea monsters, and an earth that howls. It is an island of volcanoes and fjords, endless flat petrified lava fields, green valleys, black, white, and grey mountains, outdoor swimming pools, and salted fish. It is also a land of housing shortages and inflation that make life difficult for ordinary Icelanders and immigrants recruited to work in the burgeoning tourist industry. A dear friend whose time in Iceland intersected with ours picked us up at the airport. We viewed the burning volcano from a safe distance and then visited the Blue Lagoon, sitting...
People’s Living History of Northern Ireland
To understand the so-called Troubles of Northern Irleland one must remove the veils of religion, ethnicity, and even nationalism, and begin with economy, which means learning about the unique properties of the flax plant and the geography of the North Channel. The Political Geography of Northern Ireland Then and Now. To begin to understand Northern Ireland I needed to stare at some maps. I found one of Ireland before 1920 divided into four provinces. Ulster, the most northern province, was itself divided into nine counties. I then looked at a current, partitioned map. Northern Ireland is...
A Good Tourist in Oslo?
Every adventure should include a messenger who provides the lesson of your visit. Oslo is on a hill. From the central train station, it climbs steadily. Four miles up is Frogner Park— a grand stretch of green. Advancing to the pinnacle, we passed a mass of bronze, iron, and granite, naked, ordinary, people across the age span, with distinctive Nordic features. Gustav Vigeland (1869–1943), is the sculptor responsible for the statues depicting several thousand figures. Vigeland Park struck me as unusual in three ways: 1. A single artist was given a claim to fill the entire park with their...
Dutch Bicycle Culture
While we were in Groningen, Prime Minister Mark Rutte, head of the recently defeated Neo-Liberal WD, (a political party for free markets, social freedoms like euthanasia and same-sex marriage, the EU, and support for Ukraine) became NATO’s Secretary General. The New York Times and every other international media story on Rutte noted that he biked to work. Most included a photograph of him leaving town on his bicycle. I didn’t do a thorough check, but I’m willing to bet; in The Netherlands, Marke Rutte's bicycle habits were never news. Almost everyone bikes here. I It was fascinating to...
Third International Conference on Environmental Peace Building, The Hague, The Netherlands, June, 2024
I attended the Third International Conference on Environmental Peace Building, in The Hague, The Netherlands, in June 2024. I will keep adding to this post until I finish making a narrative from my notes. My commentary in italics Session 7: Accountability, Peace and Justice (Advances in Making States and Corporations Accountable for Environmental War Crimes) Overarching points: The Environment should no longer be the silent victim of war. War in one nation affects the environment everywhere. Environmental war crime definition: mass destruction of flora and fauna, poisoning of...
To Theorize and Dance in Brussels
Brussels on eve of EU & parliamentary elections. Thoughts on organizing from Marx’s time to today during this right-wing ascendancy
Confessions of a post-Impressionist in France
“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.” 17th Century French Philosopher, Voltaire In France I acquired impressions. Impressions of Cormeilles, Normandie, France There are three Cormeilles in France. Our Cormeilles— the one where we spent the month of May 2024, is a thousand-year-old town of 1,150 people, that few in or out of France, are aware of. Some tourists happen on it, while taking a blue...
Five Questions about the Economy and Politics of Tirana, Albania
"I accepted the story I heard on foreign media: that the [1997] Albanian civil war could be explained not by the collapse of a flawed financial system but by longstanding animosities between ethnic groups... its plan could be disrupted only by outside factors — like the backwardness of our community norms — and never beset by its own contradictions." Lea Ypi Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, p300. Five Questions about the Economy and Politics of Tirana Albania On our last morning in Tirana, we crossed Skanderbeg Square and turned down a street jammed with cars, scooters, bikes,...