February 2020 In her own day Edna St. Vincent Millay was a Big Deal. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 at the age of 31, which is proof enough that she was a literary rock star. But 1923 is a long time ago and tastes change. The popularity of writers waxes and wanes and Millay's fortunes waned even during her lifetime. It's been donkey's years since I became familiar with her work, [...]
February 2020 With the ghastly muddle that is current politics in the USA in the forefront of attention these days, my thoughts turned recently to a section from Rebecca West's masterpiece Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, her recounting of world history using the framework of a trip through the former Yugoslavia in the 1930's. The section that kept being triggered by the news comes from the epilogue. Now, epilogues are usually short summings up of [...]
February 2020 Looking through some pics of a stay in Chiang Mai I made a few years ago brought me face to face with a set of photos I took on a day trip to Doi Saket, about 20km (12 miles) northeast of Chiang Mai. I was the passenger on my friend's motorbike, as I was so often wont to be. Hanging on to the back of a motorbike while going down the highway [...]
February 2020 Having spent the greater part of the last 10 years either in the Middle East or in the tropics I've managed to escape the rigors of winter for a good while. That's exactly what I wanted, since winter is no friend of mine. I grew up with it in my corner of the Bitter North and remember only too well below-zero temps in January and snow so deep we had paths between the [...]