I recently had an opportunity to take a journey for which I had time to walk. It was a pleasure, although my legs disagreed about the pleasure for about three of the 20+ kilometers I walked. The walk took me five hours, in a soft rain and stopping to take …
I haven’t posted in some time, even though my travels have continued (through northern Europe now). I haven’t really stopped, although I do know I will be settling in a new city, in a few months’ time. so, I am still traveling, but with a different feeling as I am …
Quakers are sometimes quite proud of our commitment to simplicity. And yet Quakers are often wealthy – not only in global terms but also locally. It is said that this happened in part by dint of being hard workers and known for integrity and honesty. Wealth makes it hard to …
Sometimes the Internet makes one’s work in delving through books much lighter than it would otherwise be. I was recently directed to this gem of a point of view from Martin Luther King, from a speech in 1967 in an address to the American Psychological Association: ”… I am sure …
The Dutch press is giving a lot of attention to the new amendment to the amnesty law in Suriname. The amendment now protects the suspects in the ‘December murders’, a 1982 rounding up and extra-judicial execution of critics of the government. The current president of Suriname is in fact one …
What is culture? We learn about cultures from the past. For many of us, our main thoughts about culture might come from museums. We know from archaeology that the cultural artifacts include burial methods and ceramic pots. (As a child, I felt vaguely threatened by museum trips focussing on mummies, …
I have been describing this trip through four countries in Central America as having a theme of what people in the Global North can do to alleviate or reduce poverty. The trip is just finishing, and so I present here some of my thoughts – and some key thoughts from …
I am back in Nicaragua, and I must say I am happy to be again in a place where warm welcomes are given freely. My short time in San Salvador was tainted by fear: getting fixed stares when sitting on a bench in a central square. The men staring at …
Book exchanges are truly wonderful resources – one often picks up (for free) a book one may not have chosen otherwise. In this way, I recently read Paulo Coehlo´s The Fifth Mountain, and now I am finding the work of Heather Montgomery on child prostitution fascinating. Montgomery provides a welcome …
Everywhere you look when seeking images or travel information on Guatemala, you see photos of the brightly coloured textiles of indigenous women. And tourists here are snapping photos of women on the street – it is true they wear their handwoven clothes as daily wear, and that their embroidered patterns …