It’s the consonants that give meaning to language. In fact, it’s the impediments to our breath that give sense to what passes for speech.
Liquid Amber 
Maple Cherry
language
Ants and Stories
The Ant
The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what?
Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?
OGDEN NASH
Carriers and Barriers
Who knows what ‘normal’ activities will be after this time of pandemic has passed? Who knows how to chart the path to an unknowable future from an uncertain present and a disputed past? Who knows how to prioritise public health and economic performance?
Patagonian and Fuegian Tales
‘I passed through three boring towns’ was the start of a chapter that changed the way I thought about travel writers yet again. It helped that I would visit them after I read the chapter. Both visits were stopovers of a kind. One by commercial jet, the other by ship seeking shelter from two cyclones that seemed to merge just to scare us off.
I had found In Patagonia in a shop in Buenos Aires in late 1995. I was living in a hotel on Avenida de Mayo just a stone’s throw from the Casa Rosada, the Presidential Palace. Carlos Menem had just been re-elected and there were almost weekly protest marches on Thursdays. Once, a firework cannister was directed at me for watching the passing flag, banner and placard waving throngs from my third floor hotel balcony window.
