We Do Adventure

Yesterday was a day for stirring the grey matter. It started with Rowan discovering The Guardian had a front page article about Mostar - online at least. It charted the story of War Child and mentioned the establishing of the Pavarotti Centar here in Mostar. Rowan visited the Centar a week or so back to see about getting help repairing a violin. The story she heard there was not a happy one; no money, few young people involved making music. You didn't get this side of the story from the article. Coins have but two sides; stories, it seems, can be as multi-faceted as a well cut diamond. I don't know if this adds to their beauty. The longer we live in Bosnia Herzegovina the more we learn to see every new bit of information as just another aspect of a big picture we'll never fully understand. Anyone claiming to have a handle on exactly what went on and why probably has some agenda they're trying to push. From our perspective, parts of The Guardian's article were cl...

‘You will hear of wars and threats of wars, but don’t panic.’ I’ve read those words many times and now they’ve taken on a new meaning. Jesus said them, St Matthew recorded them, but I’m reading them for the first time against the backdrop of a seemingly growing media discussion about the possibility of civil war in the country we’re living in. We’re not panicking but it does make you think a bit. ‘Don’t Panic’ is perhaps more famous for adorning the cover of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. That comic masterpiece involved the destruction of the whole world, an event that, while treated as not funny in the book, is really not funny. We live on a street where I can still see the sandbags behind which people defended their patch fifteen years ago. The thought of this country plunging itself into another violent mess when it hasn’t cleared up the remains of the last one is far from a joke. Into these sober thoughts burst an anthem that practically had me dancing around the living roo...