Harbin, Manchuria: Officials here seem reluctant to spotlight the Japanese germ warfare scientists and what they did to thousands of local inhabitants here in 1932 and beyond. Perhaps that’s the…
I realize I never finished the story of Harbin, which I visited nearly a year ago. It began with my need to research this icy Russian-Jewish-Chinese enclave in Manchuria, home…
Just two blocks from my Charleston-style home on Bridges Farm Rd., I plunge almost every day into Lake Davidson, the horseshoe-shaped lake with the gooey clay bottom. On sunny days,…
You think about the pit mix who was young once along with your children. They were all of a piece. The dog with the pointy ears and pink and black…
Charlotte, September 22, 2016. More murder, more anger, more confrontation between police in riot gear and protesters in the Queen City, the place my daughter and I call home. This…
January 11, 2016. As I stepped off the train at Harbin West station after an eight hour train ride across the Manchurian flatlands from Beijing, the station was moist and…
Yogyakarta in Central Java, Indonesia is a hidden jewel, the seat of Borobudur, the oldest Buddhist temple in the world. I was there two weeks ago at 5 AM,…
Great Cold War debates happen in the most unlikely of places. West Java, Indonesia, March 26. Today I’m invited to a very dressy event. A Russian Ambassador to Indonesia along with…
It’s been three weeks so chock full of Indonesian experience. Each day new lectures, close encounters with medical and comm students, children, security guards, cooks, geophysicists, random athletes and mop-haired…
March 4 2015: First jet lagged impressions… It’s been quite a trip to Bandung, Indonesia: a 24 hour unexpected furlough in Japan, arrival at midnight in Jakarta, strange languages,…