Education at its Finest

BFIS and Habitat for Humanity in Senegal A small window into the experience of students from the Benjamin Franklin International School in Barcelona who spent a week near Dakar, Senegal in Keur Mbaye Fall, working in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity. “If we wish to teach fish to swim, it helps if we put them…

Senegal 2010

The Senegalese are among the friendliest people in the world. Given the challenges they face as a people, this is magnified ten-fold when considering the grace with which they shared their homes and hearts with us this past week. Below is a rather large sampling of still images from our week-long visit to work with…

Dakar

View Larger Map As I write this, I am taking meds to fight off malaria. I am leaving for Dakar this morning for a week and the meds are a final, though ongoing, step in a series of vaccines administered to me en masse (The first of two rounds knocked me for a loop for…

Plaça de Catalunya: Baila!

This evening, I was heading to dinner in Sarrià when, to my surprise, upon entering the metro station @ Plaça de Catalunya, I found myself in the middle of a impromptu performance by some Cuban musicians – baila!!!

Kicking the Habits of Double-Glazing

The first week of living in a new place is somewhere up pretty high on the list of things that don’t get any easier with practice. Like a new anything, after the initial infatuation wears off, what’s left is this: the realization that what worked before is no longer valid here. Here, in a new…

Number Stations

Our dear pal, Alec (aka Catigator), contributed a track to this compilation, titled cooly-enough: Number Stations File under experimental and have a listen:

The Graffiti

in Barcelona is colorful, artful, so expressive and anything but:

The Irony of Beauty

This is an astounding metaphor for our culture and the gravity of our situation as lifeforms on a planet we know next-to-nothing about: enveloped by the inelegance of our current technology, with wires and all kinds of ugly schwack running up and down the walls surrounding and protecting him, Ed Lu is aboard the International…

Michael Pollan and The Botany of Desire

Author Michael Pollan says: The tulip, by gratifying our desire for a certain kind of beauty, has gotten us to take it from its origins in Central Asia and disperse it around the world. Marijuana, by gratifying our desire to change consciousness, has gotten people to risk their lives, their freedom, in order to grow…

The Pines : Tremolo

The Pines‘ latest album, Tremolo, has earned some great reviews fresh out of the chute, including Penguin Eggs, which reviewed it in this month’s issue: Potent, poignant, minimalist country from Iowans David Huckfelt and Benson Ramsey (son of Greg Brown sideman Bo, who produced this record). The duo spin spare, haunting melodies and imagistic words…