He stood in cold sunlight beside the bus shelter, dressed in a dark overcoat and matching suit, a leather briefcase hanging from one hand. Unlike the rest of us, the man had his back to the road, his eyes fastened on three trees just the other side of the black iron railings that mark the … Continue reading The Wild Nearby
To listen to an audio version of 'A Family Affair' click the play button "All origins become mysterious if we search far enough into the past. And almost all peoples, when we look at their earliest origins, turn out to have come from somewhere else." -Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History A fierce north wind … Continue reading A Family Affair: Szczecin, pt.1
"Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be." - Karl Scheffler, 1910 Perhaps no other city has taken up as much imaginary space over the last century as Berlin. It is a city forever in flux, not in the gradual, accumulated ways of most urban spaces, but with sudden, violent reinventions. Berlin … Continue reading City of Glass and Other Dreams: Berlin, part 1
Two things were of particular interest to me when we travelled to Tetovo in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and they both concerned longevity. While one was a religious building that had withstood a devastating 17th century fire, armed ethnic conflict and the changing fortunes of shifting political borders, the other was a religious … Continue reading Enduring Time
Julian Hoffman 