Issues, ethics, memory
I traveled in Germany recently searching for information on my Catholic ancestors. While there, I found that members of my wife's Anabaptist antecedents had rebelled against religious and civic authorities in Münster, Germany in 1534-35. Leaders of the rebellion were apprehended, tortured to death, and had their bodies placed in cages suspended from a church tower. The cages are still there.
San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico has been called one of the best small cities in the world and is a big draw for expatriates. It is indeed an attractive city, but unfortunately, the city's promoters both marginalize the past and conceal the present.
Finland and Estonia are beautiful Baltic countries to visit. But they share land borders with Russia and are anxious about the invasion of Ukraine. Both countries have cast their lot with NATO.
Suzanne Doerge, a poet and activist who lives in Ottawa, walked the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain 2016. She developed painful problems with her feet, but used her rest time, interspersed with walking, to ponder on the meaning of pilgrimage and life. The result is her book, Footfalls: Poems of the Camino.
In February 1996, I went to southern Vietnam to teach video production to a group of young agrologists in the Mekong Delta. In this piece broadcast on CBC Radio’s Morningside, then hosted by Peter Gzowski, I talk about the video course and describe some of my students.
The history of conflict in Northern Ireland is such that there has been a long and bitter disagreement over the name of one of its historic cities. The locals, a majority of them Catholics and nationalists, call it Derry, while Protestants and British loyalists call it Londonderry, the name introduced when the Crown planted London... Continue Reading →
For most of September and into early October my wife Martha and I walked the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. I had planned to post occasionally to my Pulpit and Politics blog but found that Facebook presented an easier format in which I could write while on the move, so I made multiple Facebook... Continue Reading →
My wife Martha and I spent four weeks recently in Central Europe, focused on Berlin, Prague, Vienna and Budapest. We also paid brief visits to Leipzig and Dresden in Germany and to a small city called Debrecen in Hungary. We were tourists of course and can claim no specialized knowledge of these cities or of... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 