From the monthly archives:

July 2008

Green Cape

2008.Jul.10 Thursday

We need to educate our children if we want our continent to prosper, but they can’t learn if they go to school hungry.” – Cesária Évora, the “Barefoot Diva”, Cape Verdian singer Buenos Aires – If I were to ask you to tell me a little about Cape Verde, I’m guessing you’d draw a blank. [...]

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Hitting the Sack

2008.Jul.07 Monday

Sherry… a sickly compound, the use of which will transform a nation, however bold and warlike by nature, into a race of sketchers, scribblers and punsters, in fact into what Englishmen are at the present day.” – George Borrow, English Novelist Buenos Aires – I’m going to give you the one sentence basics of sherry, [...]

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Time for a Change

2008.Jul.03 Thursday

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to [...]

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A Novel Dinner

2008.Jul.03 Thursday

I speak: Portuguese, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Esperanto, some Russian; I read: Swedish, Dutch, Latin and Greek (but with the dictionary right next to me); I understand some German dialects; I studied the grammar of: Hungarian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Polish, Tupi, Hebrew, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, Danish; I dabbled in others. But all at a [...]

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The Little Pearl

2008.Jul.02 Wednesday

I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls off a string.” – from Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery Buenos Aires – Some days you just want simple [...]

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