New York! The Big Apple! “The city that never sleeps,” as Sinatra sang. But I can?t say, along with Sinatra, that ?it?s my kind of town.? Traffic noise and horns honking in place of church bells. Not very many hellos on the street here. Where have all the palm trees gone? For that matter, what have happened to all my friends? (Relax. They?re just half a world away.) Read More
More musings from a ?stranger in his own land.?? Sometimes I feel like an anthropologist recording unusual customs in a foreign land, just as I did when I first came to the islands many years ago.
Many years ago when I was a fresh young face in the islands, I was astonished at how seldom people disagreed with one another.? Not that I grew up in a neighborhood in which people screamed and cursed at one another all day long, but there certainly were minor arguments between people that sometimes spilled over in public.? Imagine my surprise when I came to Micronesia and found that no one seemed to disagree with anyone else… at least in public.? Where were the arguments, the minor debates, the give-and-take needed to get to the truth of the matter?? Everyone appeared willing to accept at face value whatever came out of another person?s mouth.