Aging on the Run, Nationalism, Sustainable Economies
I read To The Lake: A Journey of War and Peace by Kapka Kassabova, about her roots trip circling two ancient lakes that border Albania, North Macedonia, and Greece. Kassabova rejects the nationalisms that poison the region while celebrating the magnetism of a Lake...
Aging on the Run, Nationalism, Public History, Sustainable Economies
In Albania, time folds, though the marching chronology of the country’s last 130 years appears stark with fundamental change: The Ottoman Empire, Nationalist Monarchy, Italian Fascism, Enver Hoxha’s Stalinism, Enver Hoxha’s Maoism, Enver’s Hoxha’s Enverism— a...
Aging on the Run, Nationalism, Sustainable Economies
First impressions are precious and dangerous. Precious because you see things that later you gloss over. Dangerous because you make quick assumptions based on slim evidence. Shqiperia at first glance looks to me like an in-between place: part Southern Europe, part...
Aging on the Run, Nationalism, Public History, Radical Hospitality, Sustainable Economies
Getting off the train in Madrid, we followed the crowds into the dark city. Our train companions formed a line for taxis, but we crossed the street and got on the right bus and to the right apartment. Perhaps that does not sound like a big deal to you, but we are...
Aging on the Run, Social Movements
“Check in with your bodies: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual,” the online yoga instructor said. Pain radiated down my legs. Sciatica. My mental body divided our journey into five parts, checking bus routes and times. Arriving in Cádiz on the...
Aging on the Run, PTSD and Historical Trauma, Public History
One of the books I gave away when we started this journey was Carolyn Forché’s Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness. I treasured this collection that recorded humanity’s ugliest moments so that we do not forget. I have spent a lifetime being...
