Happy New Year to the Sri Lankan Community on the island and around the world! April 13 Sri Lankans (Sinhala and Tamil) celebrated the move of the sun into the sign of Pisces, which traditionally marks the the beginning of a new year for them. My friends in the local Sri Lankan community here in […]

Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.Let it not be a death but completeness.Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.Stand […]

Ghana’s President, John Atta Mills died today at age 68. Mills narrowly won the presidency in 2009 and was reportedly planning to run for a second term in December. According to the BBC, mills died of throat cancer. John Dramani Mahama, his vice-president, has been sworn in as his replacement in a ceremony in the […]

Today is Dain’s Birthday and the 5th anniversary of his bar, Dain’s Place! I went there for lunch today and gave Dain a bottle of last year’s barrel-aged Sexual Chocolate stout. Happy birthday, oh Bearded One!  

The best blended Scotch in the history of the world – which was also the favourite drink of the Iraqi Baath Party, as it still is of the Palestinian Authority and the Libyan dictatorship and large branches of the Saudi Arabian royal family – is Johnnie Walker Black. Breakfast of champions, accept no substitute. — […]

Letter from Kurt Vonnegut to Marianne Brown shared on Letters of Note. Kurt, we miss you.

In the NY Times, Christopher McDougall writes about barefoot running and raves about the merits of a 100-year-old training exercise called 100 Up: It was five months since I discovered W.S. George’s “100-Up,” and I’d been doing the exercise regularly. In George’s essay, he says he invented the 100-Up in 1874, when he was an […]

On March 4, voters in Togo for the first time ever will have a choice between two young-ish leaders, as a new generation of politicians is slowly emerging from the shadows of the aging post-colonial crop of politicians. At least they are supposed to be able to choose. Considering that the election committee that oversees […]

Laura’s grandmother Peg was born on December 6, 1908 in Trevor, Wisconsin – the same year Bette Davis was born (April 5) and Henry Ford produced his first Model T automobile. She was the daughter of Wayne and Lillian (Frank) Bush. Peg died on December 17, 2007 peacefully in her sleep at a retirement home in […]

Today was the funeral of my co-worker Shirley, or as West Durham Baptist Church called it, her Homegoing Celebration. The church was full, and the mood was somber, but not depressed. Shirley had touched many people with kindness and generosity, and many of the people who came to bid farewell to her were grateful for […]