Category Archives: Uncategorized

Our Lady of the Snows, in Prague Baroque cathedrals, castles, apple blossoms, lilacs, forsythia and quince, winding rivers and rolling hills, broad fields of rape, pronounced “rap,” which is that intense yellow flower that I thought was mustard; the countryside is beautiful and we came just as the apple trees were blossoming. Czechoslovakia was createdContinue reading “Czech Republic: More than castles and villages”

Walking up through the village of Stranny to the road. We’ll go a few hundred yards along the road and then turn off on the hiking path. Apple trees were just coming into bloom, along with lilacs and forsythia.  Roads through the hills were planted with apple trees, one every 30 feet. We walked fromContinue reading “A Walk in the Country”

Much too soon after we got back from Nepal, we went to Chicago for the Labor Notes conference. Chicago (Oak Park), April 2018. A little red, a little blue. This is from the front steps of our friends Diane and Phil’s house. One of my goals in this blog is to record instances of howContinue reading “Who can participate in “freedom of association”? Labor Notes 2018, Chicago”

To see where Jammu is, look at http://www.maphill.com/india/jammu-and-kashmir/3d-maps/physical-map/ And for background: Kashmir, The Case for Freedom, Verso Press 2011 with chapters by Tariq Ali, Hilal Bhatt, Angana Chatterji, Habbah Khatum, Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy. See the little black and orange sign with the arrow, half-hidden behind the striped awning? That’s the sign to ourContinue reading “Hotel Ragunath, Jammu and Delhi”

  About a year ago, Deborah Merola and Rajkumar Pandasani submitted a video of the One World Theatre’s production of Anne Frank’s Diary to the Eighth World Theater Olympics competition. It was accepted for the 2018 festival, to be presented at two of the eleven festival sites, Jammu and Delhi. The World Theatre Olympics isContinue reading “Anne Frank’s Diary at the 8th World Theatre Olympics in Jammu and Delhi”

One World Theatre is a performance group that puts on a regular season of plays in English and Nepalese in Kathmandu, Nepal.  We came to Nepal because my friend Deborah Merola, founder of One World Theatre, is taking a production they did a year ago — The Diary of Anne Frank –  from Nepal toContinue reading “Chekhov’s Three Sisters at One World Theatre in Kathmandu”

Things shut down early in Kathmandu; this was a lone shop open at about 8 pm on Friday night. You can’t expect to go out and get dinner after a show. But you can buy newspapers at news-stands, some in English and some critical of the government. Nepal has a parliamentary system led by theContinue reading “What’s going on in Nepal?”

This is a picture of the airport in Guangzhou, China, where we had a 4 hour layover between flights on China Southern to Kathmandu. Dark, cavernous, empty. Of course it was the middle of the night. And this is a picture of people trying to get a password to do their email with.  Unlike inContinue reading “Does control work? And Nepal at last”

I took the train to Los Angeles along with a team of cheerleaders who were on their way to a national competition in Las Vegas. They were both boys and girls, but these girls sat at the table across from mine. I asked if I could take their picture. They asked, “Why?” I said, “SoContinue reading “Does democracy work?”

View from the back of the ferry, crossing from San Francisco to Oakland.  The Minimum Wage conference at Ton Duc Thang took place and, from what we could tell, skyping in, it was a great success. Among the achievements:  posting the papers on a google drive in advance, so that everyone could read them; bringingContinue reading “Minimum Wage Conference at TDT, Women’s March, Hotel Workers and Cal OSHA”