One often sees luxury housing developments advertised as ‘exclusive’. The positive implication of this has always puzzled me. Exclusive means someone is excluded: it inspires me to ask who is excluded. And yet when I ask, those around me don’t seem to hear my question as a pointed criticism, as …
Someone has died, someone I know who was around my age. I didn’t know her for long, but I feel I had a bond with her. Her way of being made it easy to be close with her. I have been thinking about what will change in the world with …
I have been a Quaker for 22 years. ‘Unprogrammed’ or liberal Quakers, as you may know, don’t have pastors or other leaders. Community leadership role are usually rotated after a few years, and it is the community which makes decisions together to act in the world. A few years ago, …
I am suffering a bit from familiar foibles. You know what I mean: those foibles in other people and cultures – always easier to spot than one’s own. They make me grumpy – or, maybe I am already grumpy and therefore I notice how people in one country talk rather …
The newspaper announced it today: trees affect their environment. I am amazed that this is news – are there people who still don’t know this simple fact. We don’t need the media to announce it to us – just walk into a forest in winter and feel how it is …
Panajachel, Guatemala- I am quite proud that I can read the entire newspaper now in Spanish. It does mean that my vocabulary includes a breadth of words relating to crime, drugs, and jail, and also quite a few relating to commerce and development. The World Bank recently published figures about …