the hypnotist collector

On my way in from the airport, the taxi driver, who was very much like a Spanish Pete Postelthwaite, spoke to me about the prevalence of Catalan and how his sons, though fluent in Spanish, Catalan and English, refuse to … Continue reading →

The Walled City The thick stone walls of the old city of Dubrovnik are a source of great pride.  The man who drove me from the airport spoke at length about them.  He then asked me, “You have no questions … Continue reading →

Vigeland Park at the Nobel Peace Center Thor Heyerdahl’s Ra-II at the Kontiki Museum The Kontiki, Heyerdahl’s landmark expedition in 1947, which proved that pre-Columbian South American people could have sailed the Pacific all the way to the Polynesian Islands … Continue reading →

There is grandeur in this view of life…from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. –Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859) The great hall and the Darwin Centre’s cocoon–a … Continue reading →

Cambridge, 20 August 2010

There is a strange exhilaration that comes from standing so close to a once wild animal, separated not by a fence but by a shallow ditch that you wonder why they don’t cross.  Coming upon the monkey house, however, and … Continue reading →

The sacred and the profane an uncanny resemblance On “the mysterious quality peculiar to…photographs”: “One has the impression…of something stirring in them, as if one caught small sighs of despair…as if the pictures had a memory of their own and … Continue reading →

Obama and Putin marionettes–the heads are the same, only the color is different In a town that capitalizes on its now extinct Jewish population, and which is situated so close to Theresienstadt, it seems more than a little distasteful to … Continue reading →

“Borders?  I have never seen one.  But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.” – Thor Heyerdahl It’s been six countries, five currencies, six languages, of which I know only three so far…