I read Tom Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again in the fall of 1975, at Oberlin College, before I dropped out. In the autobiographical novel, a young white man from Asheville moves to New York City and then returns to the South where he feels he no longer belongs....
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...
I began to write this as we pulled out of the bus station on our way to the Netherlands. Ten days in northwestern Germany was hard on me. My body told me so – a painful rash, heart palpitations, chest pains, and a headache that began each day the moment I woke up. We...
Brussels, like Paris, unfolded as a mash-up of old and new. While Paris was a hard 24 hours, Brussels was an inviting and fun three days. The difference was serendipity, not a true reflection of these two venerable places. This is the problem with short...
Berat— Albania’s oldest city —has 1,000 identically-shaped windows in its Ottoman-era old town and a Byzantine city on top of one of its mountains. The Osum River runs through the town with buildings hugging the slopes. A green ridged range covers its north side....
For seven months in Minneapolis, we gave away our things. Items with memories attached, once gone—are quickly forgotten. Gifting two thousand books I thought represented me, I felt more free than I had in decades. And yet, in our tiny apartment in Portugal, what did...
