May 30, 2019
From May 30, 2019 During World War II, the US and Japan waged an extended battle for control of the Solomon Islands, including the island of Guadalcanal, in the South Pacific. I visited there over Memorial Day weekend, and have put together my own photos and historical pics to tell that story. The story begins […]
May 28, 2019
From May 28, 2019 This man and his wife on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, purposely set themselves apart to live and demonstrate the traditional life of their ancestors. It is their full-time way of life. I visited them today. All photos and videos are taken with their permission. First I was greeted with the […]
April 30, 2019
Before leaving for Italy, our family watched an episode of “Chef’s Table” on Netflix devoted to Dario Cecchini, a butcher in the small town of Panzano in the Chianti region south of Florence. So we looked up him up on the internet and, luckily, were able to book a reservation at his restaurant, attached to […]
April 29, 2019
On our trip to Italy over Easter, I took the family to a small village outside Greve in Chianti (south of Florence) for a family cooking class. It took place in the home of Stefania Balducci. Our first sight when we walked in her door was the table set for the meal we would create with her help.
January 26, 2019
The earliest written reference to Sri Lanka dates from the Indian epic the Ramayana (c 500 BC) in which Ravana, the island’s demon king, kidnaps the hero Rama’s wife Sita. According to legend, after kidnapping Sita, Ravana hid her in a cave behind these falls south of Ella, in Sri Lanka’s central highlands. The Seetha […]
November 18, 2018
Prompted by my trip there in November 2018, I’m going to do two history posts on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). I’ll begin with the ancient history … and it goes way back. Because modern humans – and before that, the ancestors of humans – almost […]
November 18, 2018
From November 2018. Getting ready to climb to the rock-hewn churches of Maryam Korkor and Daniel Korkor atop this butte in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. (You can just spot the latter as a tiny shadow near the top of the second bulge from the left). It was already a hike to get here, following footpaths between […]
November 17, 2018
Debre Damo, sitting atop a mesa in Tigray, is one of Ethiopia’s oldest Christian monasteries, dating back to the 6th Century AD. According to legend, the saint Abuna Aregawi found his way to the summit when a snake lowered its tail for him to climb. The mountaintop monastery of Debre Damo, seen from a distance. […]
November 8, 2018
“Life can only be understood backwards,” the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observed, “but it must be lived forwards.” When we try to identify with people who did not know what happened next, we shed new light on them, and on what did happen.
November 8, 2018
Published in The New York Review, November 8, 2018: World War I Relived Day by Day by Patrick Chovanec Four years ago, I went to war. Like many of the people whose stories I followed in my daily “live-tweets” on World War I, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. What began […]