It took, I remember, five days to spot a cloud in the sky when I arrived in Dubai for the first time in early November, 2003.

Every morning I would open the curtains in the bedroom of my 16th floor apartment, expecting the worst -- I was born and bred in Wales where the meteorological default setting is wet and windy. So to look up and see the same pristine blue that one might find in a tropical lagoon for almost an entire week – not even the faintest brush-stroke of a cirrus cloud -- was something that struck me as bizarre, if not unwelcome.

PostedNovember 6, 2013

AuthorGuest User

CategoriesWhere

TagsSeasonal, Dubai

Inconvenience and anxiety are small prices to pay for a front row seat to the birth of a democracy.

But as an 11-year-old experiencing the death throes of apartheid in South Africa I’m not sure I fully grasped the events unfolding. When history was happening around me I was, mostly, just spoiling for a bike ride.

PostedJuly 31, 2013

AuthorGuest User

CategoriesWhere

TagsExploration

When my wife Vanessa asked Bill Fletcher about visiting India

he said, “if you want India with pain, go to the North, for India without pain, come to the South where I live.” Our Indian visas were good for one year, so we decided to take the painless route, and visit Fletcher in Fort Cochin, in the state of Kerala. We’d visit the North on a subsequent trip, we told ourselves— it’s only a four-hour flight from Dubai, where we lived at the time. This proved incorrect, at least so far, as our daughter was born about nine months after that trip, and India with pain and a baby didn’t sound very attractive.

PostedJuly 31, 2013

AuthorGuest User

CategoriesWhere

TagsExploration

settled-and-unsettled-by-rose-gowan@2x.jpg

It’s a very strange thing to find oneself speaking like a four-year-old in mid-life.

My daughter is four, and my son is only six, so this is all very familiar; I have seen it from the outside. I stammer; I get frustrated searching for a word that just won’t come to my mouth— I know that I’m using some words and phrases incorrectly, and I’m embarrassed about it, but I can’t help it. When I’m speaking and someone smiles, I’m not sure if they are smiling to encourage me, or laughing at my pronunciation. When I’m speaking and I’m met with blank looks, I can’t tell if it is my words or my ideas that are incomprehensible.

PostedJanuary 8, 2013

AuthorGuest User

CategoriesWhere

TagsLearning, French, Montréal, Adult Education, Curiosity

red-clay-halo-effect-by-april-peveteaux@2x.jpg

Perhaps you are one of those people joyously living out your life

in the town where you were born, schooled, and are now repeating the pattern with your own family. If so, congratulations. Because I believe it takes a person truly comfortable with him or herself to be able to lay down roots and not be overwhelmed with a persistent urge to rip them out. I was never that person. In fact, I’m sitting in my lovely mid-century modern home in the incomparable Hollywood Hills right now thinking, “I’m so over L.A.”

PostedJanuary 8, 2013

AuthorGuest User

TagsWanderlust, NYC, Regionalism, Curiosity

My first book is being published soon.

It’s a collection of short stories set in the Arabian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where I first came to work in 2003, seduced by a mixture of money (back then I was an impoverished freelancer in London) and a strong curiosity about another continent, another way of life.

PostedJanuary 8, 2013

AuthorGuest User

CategoriesWhere

TagsWriting, Literature, Dubai

Protected by a lone, sparsely populated stand of trees amid a

sun-bleached field a group of students and parent volunteers are eyeing both my buckskins and the assemblage of stones, sticks, nuts, and other materials that form the basis of today’s lesson. Soon, they’ll be using their hands to create string from sticks, drill holes in stones with sticks, create beads from stones and nuts, and attempt to create fire by friction. The assembled learners will also practice timeless hunting technologies including: rabbit sticks, hand spears, hoop and pole game, spear throwers, and bow and arrow.

PostedSeptember 25, 2012

AuthorGuest User

TagsTeaching, Word Up, Tech, Sustainability

I’m walking to breakfast on the sunny coast of Tenerife Island

when I notice a muted television in a hotel lobby projecting a news report about Chile. I stop to watch, having lived and worked in coastal Chile for 7 years--- I consider it my adopted homeland. The news is frantic and sensationalist and I am immediately crestfallen as I silently learn that late last night, a massive 8.8 earthquake struck the south-central coast of Chile - triggering a series of 20-foot tsunamis and devastating hundreds of miles of coastline and small cities exactly where I used to live and work. My heart drops and my chest tightens. I am suddenly chilled and feel very far from home.

PostedSeptember 25, 2012

AuthorGuest User

TagsEnvironmentalism, Surfing, Career, Preparedness Meets Opportunity, Activism

long-distance-operator-by-jill-tarter@2x.jpg

The basic question is: does life exist beyond earth.

Scientists, who are called astrobiologists, are tying to find that out right now. Most astrobiologists are trying to figure out if there’s microbial life on Mars, or in the ocean under the frozen surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, or in the liquid hydrocarbon lakes that we’ve found on Saturn’s moon Titan.

PostedSeptember 25, 2012

AuthorGuest User

TagsWord Up, Science, Jill Tarter, Astrobiology, SETI

occupying-occupy-by-hiya-swanhuyser@2x.jpg

"When I saw you scraping wet sandwiches off the sidewalk

with your bare hands that first night, that's when I knew you were really committed." As my co-curator at the Occupy San Francisco Art & Performance Series, Seth Fischer said a lot of funny things, but the sandwiches comment was probably the funniest.

PostedSeptember 25, 2012

AuthorGuest User

TagsArt, Occupy, Preparedness Meets Opportunity, Music, Activism

Hot and Cold

It took, I remember, five days to spot a cloud in the sky when I arrived in Dubai for the first time in early November, 2003.

Free Wheeler

Inconvenience and anxiety are small prices to pay for a front row seat to the birth of a democracy.

Kerala Calling

When my wife Vanessa asked Bill Fletcher about visiting India

Settled and Unsettled: Learning To Live In French

It’s a very strange thing to find oneself speaking like a four-year-old in mid-life.

Red Clay Halo Effect

Perhaps you are one of those people joyously living out your life

The Sated Camel

My first book is being published soon.

Learn To Burn

Protected by a lone, sparsely populated stand of trees amid a

Coasting To Action

I’m walking to breakfast on the sunny coast of Tenerife Island

Long Distance Operator

The basic question is: does life exist beyond earth.

Occupying Occupy

"When I saw you scraping wet sandwiches off the sidewalk

Social

Colophon

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