Collaboration in Time and Space
Two events involving my son Eric coalesce to begin our new year. The first involves his trans-Atlantic collaboration with my god-daughter Anja Decke to put on a multi-lingual version of his ecology musical for children, “Animal Party.” Anja’s father, Gerd Decke, is a long-time friend of fifty years who opened the door for me to [...]
Beginning Again
In the past year my wife Sylvia has pulled back from her big artistic projects and gone back to the piano, which took a back seat to her other pursuits in music and the arts for many decades. We recently found a picture of her at age seventeen standing next to her family’s piano in a [...]
Peace, Poetry, and Cyprus
The past two weeks have been a departure from my usual routines of writing and woodworking, as I journeyed to research some family history at the old family home in Virginia and then took part in this year’s Lake Junaluska Peace Conference, followed by the semi-annual conference of the North Carolina Writer’s Network. In between [...]
Contradictions in Cherokee
Last week we went over to Cherokee for the 16th Annual Trail of Tears Association Conference at the Cherokee Casino-Hotel. Cherokee is now effectively two towns – the traditional tribal offices, museum, fairgrounds, and craft shops; and the casino-dominated buildings and motels to the east. What echoes in my memory is the cacophony of contradictions [...]
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Red Clay, Blood River