On the plane to Belfast I was handed a Wall Street Journal and found this story about how the lack of health insurance in China causes deaths and heartache to millions. China’s health system is strictly pay as you go. Cash upfront or you don’t get treated. Fewer than one […]
We drove up to County Antrim today on Northern Ireland’s rocky coast. Here we felt the stiff winds and driving rain that the country is known for, and found a remarkable geological wonder called the Giant’s causeway. Along the cliffs of the shore, astonishing hexagonal shaped rocks about one-foot wide […]
Yesterday we took a ride to County Down, a land a poet once called “a basket of eggs,” because of the rolling hills. We met Eugene McConville, who is one of Ulster’s last flax farmers, the plant from which linen is made. He showed us how he takes the flax […]
This morning in Mal Maison, my cool and very dark Belfast hotel, I read the Independent, Britain’s fiercely liberal tabloid. I leaned into a spotlight in the dimly lit dining room and read a feature by Simon Usborne profiled “Doctor Dora” a brave Nigerian woman who is called ‘the scourge […]
Tonight I joined other journalists at the All Ireland premier of Belfast-born CS Lewis’ new Narnia movie, held at a waterfront arena called the Odyssey Center. A little while after we arrived and stood sipping champagne, a man entered who looked a little bit like Kirk Kirkorian. The deference with […]
Tonight after dinner we got a chance to sample Irish music in Belfast. We went to a crowded little pub on a side street where a folk band called Brier was ready to play. The people in the pub were all locals, drinking a lot of Guiness and joking and […]
Belfast is rainy and damp but still warms my heart. Our guide Ken is a playwright who has several plays that have been produced here. While we toured Belfast he recited poems by William Butler Yeats in his rich Irish baritone. Very moving, the poem was about a man who […]
Our first morning here in Belfast we took a tour and absorbed the main message: Belfast is booming, and the days of the men in hoods and the violence is all gone. The same armored vehicles that used to prowl the streets can now be rented out for parties and […]
Gaping Void is a very popular blog with a Google page rank of 7, written by Hugh Macleod. This means that when he writes, the search engine giant lists this blog very high in searches. “I first heard the brilliant term “Real Estate Porn” when reading Gawker a few years […]
Up early on this 15 degree morning reading the Telegraph UK about BP, and their environmental moves. “One such project is in Scotland where the battle against rising greenhouse gas emissions has focused on one of the main culprits, carbon dioxide. At one power station, the company is combining a […]
“Imagine spending the whole day on that train,” a motorman named William Martinez once said in a Bronx diner near the end of the D line, his route for several years. “It’s an exercise in staying awake. I was telling somebody it’s like watching the same movie 1,000 times, but […]