Springing Spring

Why does it seem that with every year, winter seems to get longer and longer? No matter how mild the year, as with this past winter here in Extremadura, the dark days of the ‘other’ equinox drag on longer than your 10th grade math teacher droning on about algebra. I even sometimes find myself wishing…

Battuta’s Least Known Journey

This plaque on the church is about the only evidence you’ll find of Battuta’s visit in the town of Coin. Think Marco Polo was the world’s greatest traveler? If you do, it’s because you haven’t read Ibn Battuta. For whatever reason, be they ethnocentric prejudices, islamophobia or the simple fact that Polo had better PR,…

The Curse of Too Much

More than 20 centuries ago, Aristotle wrote that ethics and therefore happiness lie somewhere in the middle of extremes…where that somewhere exactly is has been debated since his Nicomachean Ethics came out, but few people would dispute that, to a certain extent, some truth lies in his premise. The Iberian peninsula and Spain in particular…

A late May Afternoon

The 20’s of May are almost finished and the 7pm sun is still hot enough to bake the dust that swirls up in the heat. The festivities have yet to begin and the police are still in the shade. The very recent whitewash would still be wet if the temperatures weren’t in the 30’s. The…