At the start and end of each day, our long-haired, whippet thin guide Elijah would announce it was time for a “Map Chat” and we’d gather around to learn where we had paddled or where we going to paddle as we wended our way around a couple of the northern-most Yasawa Islands. If you don’t […]
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Truganini’s Necklace
Pictured above is the bust made in Truganini’s likeness that is held in the Australian Museum in Sydney. It is a copy of an earlier one made by Benjamin Law but there is an obvious difference between it and the original. In the copy the sculpted shell necklace, a prominent feature of the original, has […]
Harry Onsman Eulogy
Harry Julian Onsman On her 32nd birthday in 1951, Elisabeth Onsman gave birth to her second son, naming him after her parents. Grandfather Harmen Visser was an introverted realist; grandmother Jeltje Heerema was a socialist activist. On the paternal side, grandfather Edzer was a football fanatic and grandmother Geertruida was a non-nonsense individualist. Inevitably Harmen […]
from “A Foreigner in the Goldfish Bowl”
When I came home late one afternoon, early evening really, there was a letter lying on the kitchen table. Neither the kind with a window that inevitably brings a bill or something equally as uninteresting nor a handwritten one that demanded to be read sitting down with a cup of tea, this one was an […]