They say that as long as you remain curious, you stay young. If that’s true, I’ve lost several decades and am seventeen again—the age when last I saw Sister Margaret-Mary, who was then thirteen and known as Meg. We probably . . .
Christmas Day 2008, I heard Harold Pinter’s voice on the radio; it was cracked and wobbly from his illness, but I thought, It’s still strong. Even when the hardware is failing him, his voice comes out strong. No decoration words, . . .
What happens if you are born in the latter part of the twentieth century in America and find your most personal reflection, the mirror of your inner self, in music created on another continent more than a century or two . . .
I began reading Eduardo Galeano when I arrived in Mexico for the first time—it was 1973—and met Cedric Belfrage, whose translation of Open Veins of Latin America had just been published. Open Veins was a treatise on history and political . . .