On New Years Day 2023 our first Piano+1 Program in Europe began with a piano donated to Ukrainian refugee kids in Krakow, Poland. This is the story behind this project. Being kind takes work The day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I knew I had to help the Ukrainians. Little did I know it…… Continue reading On Pianos for Ukrainian Kids
A Eulogy to Granny Sarah
What wonderful virtue does the moon possess that allows it to rise each evening? Whether in Nairobi or Shenzhen, I see the same moon in the sky, just as I see the same sun rise and set in either city. If they are not the same, how many thousands of suns and moons trace a…… Continue reading The Peony (or How Long Is The Path From Death To Birth?)
Associated Press announced recently that 2,975 people died in Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria. At first, The New York Times web site placed a modest link beneath a flurry of headlines about a so called NAFTA deal, the passing of a statesman and the profile of an actor. Belatedly, it added an editorial. Most media…… Continue reading Opinion: The Lost Ones (or The Other 9/11)
A Reply Sent From The Southwest Expedition (or How Did Time Begin, And Why Does It End When One Dreams?) When I was a child time vanished, or perhaps nothing ever changed. When I made my first deep breath, the baobabs and acacia trees of the savannah and the tea and coffee bushes of the…… Continue reading A Reply Sent From The Southwest Expedition
My mother was the first of her generation to be born in America. Her father and mother escaped Russian pogroms when they were children. She was born under Sagittarius, in Brookline, Massachusetts. She didn’t know (or care) she was white and Jewish until her parents and friends learned of her Kenyan fiancé, and her mother…… Continue reading Jasper Lake (or After The Formlessness, Who Gave Things Shape?)
I do not remember the first word I said. It was not Baba, because my father was rarely around, and didn’t much like me (from what I have heard). It may have been Ma or Mama (but I only say that because of popular convention). Our childhood shapes our adulthood, and therefore if I extrapolate…… Continue reading A Little Rain
Africa is a place of sublime contrasts and savage indifference. To view for the first time a lion hunt and kill, muscles rippling in the sun, to see it pick up the body of an oryx with just its teeth – and all beneath the great blue bowl of a sky that seems to stretch …… Continue reading Spearing the Fish
When I was younger, I regularly visited my father’s homestead in Kenya’s western Nyanza province. Green and wet hills wrapped voluptuously around the clusters of single-roomed thatched huts. The land was rich with oaks, figs, euphoria, sadry and blue gum trees. The baobab, known across Africa for its medicinal and life healing properties, called mirembe,…… Continue reading The Old Fieldhand
In all the world, there is no sky more beautiful than the African sky. During the day, it is a vast concave bowl flecked with gold and snow, so vast and encompassing one may be forgiven for having a feeling of vertigo. It is even more marvellous at night because all the most interesting things…… Continue reading Uplifting Thoughts on a Spring Night
Once upon a time, in a year I do not want to remember (but long ago), I took a safari tour across Northern Kenya. On a day I also choose to forget, I arrived at the end of the world. Scarped slopes lay accusingly in the distance, behind Lake Turkana. Round-bellied children looked up at…… Continue reading World’s End
A Tang Poet From Nairobi 