This is an information message
We use cookies to enhance your experience. By continuing, you agree to our use of cookies. Learn more here.
The morning began uneventfully enough. When I peered out the window, an overcast sky greeted me (I greeted it back with a prayer). Because I was attending a conference, I skipped my usual twenty-minute walk back and…
When we had our old house put back into a better state, the wife made sure that we would have a niche in a corner of the living room for the statuettes of Jesus, Mary and the…
It takes upwards of twenty minutes to travel by car from our village to the city. The road skirts a channel, which offers an expansive view of the sea and the boats leaving and arriving, and of…
We don’t see them anymore, not in the city. But I suspect that with their baskets they still foot the roads in the country to sell charcoal. Mostly elderly women with no other source of income, they…
The journalist Pico Iyer, who wrote for Time magazine, left a high-paying job and a luxurious home in New York for a simple life in Japan. A two-room apartment in the vicinity of Kyoto takes the place…
Whatever we will do without our helpers. They have become part of the Filipino household, and – because oftentimes they happen to be relatives too – play an essential part in the family life of even the…
As soon as I settled, the taxicab accelerated, and I was off to a new day. How often I had taken this route, daily in fact, and yet always it had its surprises. Three or four nights…
Two weeks ago, our daughter Yeni married Syd, a fine young man from my wife’s hometown. They had gone to the same law school and finished the course together. After passing the bar examinations, they worked in…
Upon getting up and after two short prayers (Morning Offering, Angelus), I take four glasses of water, a routine advised by a friend, a priest, who himself practices it when he found that it cleared his joints…
When Pope Sixtus IV built the Sistine Chapel, he asked a group of artists to decorate its interior. One of them, Pietro Perugino, painted a cycle of frescoes on one of the walls, which included a…
The painter Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1598-1657) lived during the Dutch Golden Age, which spanned the 17th century and saw the rise in the world of Dutch trade, science, military and art. He began training as a landscape painter…
Before she called it a day, the help left boiled bananas on the table for my afternoon snack. They steamed. A quick touch with a finger confirmed that she had just cooked them. The bananas brought to…
This is an information message
We use cookies to enhance your experience. By continuing, you agree to our use of cookies. Learn more here.