Aging on the Run, Balkans, PTSD and Historical Trauma, Public History, Radical Hospitality, Social Movements
Albania’s oldest city has 1,000 identical windows in its Ottoman-era old town, and a Byzantine city on top of one of its mountains. The Osum River runs through Berat, with buildings hugging the slopes. A green ridged range covers its north side. South of the...
Aging on the Run, Nationalism, Sustainable Economies
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken came to Tirana, Albania. He did not stay long. Not long enough for a state dinner. He would eat in Munich, his next stop. The Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama chastised him for this diplomatic slight. While Blinken was in...
Aging on the Run, Balkans, Former Yugoslavia, Nationalism, Sustainable Economies, war and peace
I read To The Lake: A Journey of War and Peace by Kapka Kassabova, about her roots trip circling ancient lakes that border Albania, North Macedonia, and Greece. Kassabova rejects the nationalisms that poison the region while celebrating the magnetism of Lake Ohrid,...
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, got on the right bus to the right apartment. Perhaps that does not sound like a big deal to you, but we are notorious...
