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Ithaca from a long ago and right now
Maceo Carrillo Martinet. A name I can’t forget simply because it belongs to the bluest human being I know. I wrote about Maceo a few weeks ago (‘To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows’). It’s been...
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Visual cartographers and cartography
Who knows a land like the back of his or her hand, as the saying goes? Those who live in full and respectful engagement with the land could be a good enough answer. ‘The land’ is of course not just an...
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No 27, Dickman’s Road, Colombo 5
Aunty Lakshmi with her student (and my sister) Ru FreemanThat’s an address. How on earth could it be the title of an article? It could. Well, it is. And this is partly attributable to what the address...
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That ‘English Smile’
‘English with a smile’ is the title of a series of study guides for students and teachers of English written by W.H. Samaranayake, the renowned educationist, grammarian and philanthropist. Samaranayake...
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The gift and yoke of bastardy
Towards the end of the last millennium with some countries worrying about glitches associated with Y2K or the year 2000, a magazine, maybe ‘Time’ or ‘Newsweek,’ asked world renowned people a simple...
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The world is made for re-colouring
Colouring books for kids are usually designed to train them to stay within the lines. It’s probably meant to help them develop a steady hand. So when they start out, they cross lines and, by and by,...
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If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain
Tony Courseault, my friend who lives in Jacksonville, Florida, is not just a basketball fan, he’s an astute student of the game. He knows history and he knows that this history is racist. He knows that...
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The Book of Layering
There’s layering that can be seen at dawn and at dusk and sometimes at various moments during the day depending on the weather. Travellers know for they’ve seen. Those who have cultivated observational...
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Who did not listen, who’s not listening still?
That’s a slight spin from a line in Don Maclean’s popular song ‘Starry starry night,’ dedicated to Vincent Van Gogh, subsequently used in the experimental adult animated biographical film ‘Loving...
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Street corner stories
‘…[T]he sign said, "The words on the prophets are written on the subway walls,’ is a line from one of the more popular songs of the duo Simon and Garfunkle, who have been accused of robbing melodies...
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Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse
Marlon Ariyasinghe, poet, dramatist and friend, understands words. He understands that words are political or can be so. A few days ago he offered some observations on the words ‘resilient’ and...
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World’s End
Adults say all kinds of things, whether or not there are children present, not realising that they are heard, what they say is understood in various ways and remembered too. When I was a little over...
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From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva
It was the 19th of May, 1989. I was doing a part time job as a library assistant. It was, one could, say, a pretty cushy job. A departmental library is used mostly by graduate students of the...
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Of red ants, bridges and possibilities
Photograph: Sandra MackNo 69, Jambugasmulla Mawatha, Nugegoda is an address I’ve known for more than 40 years. That’s where my friend since 1977, Kanishka Goonewardena, now a professor at the...
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A song of terraced paddy fields
I may have never heard of Barclay Jones if one of his students, Kanishka Goonewardena, hadn’t chanced upon some terraced paddy fields in my company. Barclay G Jones, Cornell professor of city and...
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The books of disquiet
There are quiet places on this planet. Well, quiet except for natural sounds: the breaking of waves, a bird call, the wind in the trees and such. Stillness too, if you were to ignore the movement of...
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The 13th Amendment: by thugs, with thugs and for thugs
There are some uncomfortable truths about the 13th Amendment, devolution of power and of course provincial councils. Let’s begin with the here-and-now. Provincial Council elections haven’t been held in...
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There's dust and words awaiting us at crosswords and crossroads
Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet, once asked (and I am paraphrasing because I can’t remember the exact words), ‘if man be dust, what blows across the plain, is it people?’ What if each speck of dust is a...
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So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautist?
Errol Alphonso was a friend and mentor. I was also his guardian in his last days, putting down that title in black and white to help sort out a thorny problem at the home for the elderly where he was a...
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Unbearable taxes: aragalists asked for it, didn’t they?
In the heady days of the ‘Aragalaya’ The BASL (Bar Association of Sri Lanka), the right-wing stink tank Advocate (a docile servant of the Atlas Network, an extension of the US foreign policy...
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