The China Story Amsterdam– Feb. 18th 2021 The very beginning is, when Sidney Rittenberg, The Man who stayed Behind, receives me in his home near Seattle, in the State of Washington in the U.S. He was living in China as a US Army renegade and deserter ending up to be Chairmans Mao’s trusted American. But…
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Innocence in Brazil Arriving for the first time on a quiet Sunday afternoon on a domestic flight from Belo Horizonte at the Santos Dumont city airport of an almost silent Rio de Janeiro. May 1969. I Immediately feel at home. The sounds, the temperature, the light that is constantly changing, the sea, the beach, the…
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by Shel Silverstein I’ll tell you the story of Cloony the ClownWho worked in a circus that came through town.His shoes were too big and his hat was too small,But he just wasn’t, just wasn’t funny at all.He had a trombone to play loud silly tunes,He had a green dog and a thousand balloons.He was…
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Con or no-conman Amsterdam, Feb. 10th 2021– First time I went to Astoria, New York, to the address Sam had given me, the owner of the building laughed at me when we met and I asked for Sam. He grinned somehow and said: ‘ No, no, there is no Sam Summerlin living here. Does he…
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Betty Bigombe had already hiked eight miles through the jungle, and there was still no sign of life. She was no stranger to a long walk — growing up in northern Uganda, she’d walked four miles each way to school. She subsisted on one meal a day in a communal homestead where her uncle had eight wives. Now she…
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By the 16th century, European painters had become masterful at crafting illusions of perspective, giving viewers an impression of lifelike, three-dimensional depth on normally flat surfaces. Building on this well of Renaissance knowledge, a small handful of artists began pushing linear perspective further still, crafting works that required the viewer to occupy a single vantage…
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Flow experiences are very rewarding, and arise when our skill level and challenge level are optimally matched; too little challenge and we get bored, too much and we feel anxious. Chess is a great way to access flow, but as a lodestar for life, flow has limitations. Usually it describes a quality of consciousness, not…
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Concentration is not always that rewarding. It comes and goes, forms and collapses, builds up and then crumbles because there is an upper limit to what players can keep in their heads at any given moment. I find myself going up to my upper limit and getting off it repeatedly. When I look into the…
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Together we create a story, and narrative themes such as attack and defense are both reduced and reduced to certain movements with certain pieces on certain squares, which we incorporate as stenographers, in our own arcana of algebraic notation. The climax of a game’s story might be “Brutal counterattack!”, But the record only reflects the…
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Chess has been a source of friendship, refuge and growth since I was five, and I have been a grandmaster for twenty years. The lifetime title is the highest awarded to chess players and is based on achieving three qualification standards at international events that often deliver top performances, combined with an international rating that…
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