Category Archives: Culture

  For The Fallen Laurence Binyon, Cornwall, 1915 With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flash of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free. Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres. […]

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What do you think of when someone says: “the beach”? I think of tanning lotion and skin being bathed in sunlight… of gentle winds whispering through the casuarinas… of swaying palms and golden sands… I guess my first thought is tropical: not at all like the beaches we visited on the Sunshine Coast of British […]

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The top end of West Virginia is about as far north as you can get and still be in the south.  You needn’t drive many miles to get from wooded, mountainous areas inhabited by tough mountain folk to genteel old towns of stone and brick buildings with iron lattice railings and faux wooden shutters. People […]

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During my early years in Thailand, I was invited to conduct some teacher-training in the southern province of Ranong.  This was pretty exciting for me as it was my first foray off the main tourist tracks and into the real Thailand. My hosts kindly took me on a tour of the area: beautiful coastline with mangrove reserves and […]

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Being a visitor in a place is very different from living there.  It’s not so much that we forget where we are, or that we necessarily even take it for granted, but that the business of day-to-day living takes so much of our attention. I was reflecting on this as I ambled out from our hotel, early on […]

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