This is a portrait of the much younger writer and artist Ricker Winsor by Austrian painter Alex Rutsch (RIP).
What is Faith?
It is difficult to talk about faith. Everybody has their own idea. And you can’t give it to someone assuming you have it. What is the definition of faith anyway? How about this? No matter how bad things get you still feel everything is ok. I don’t mean that stupidly, but that one senses that…
Keep readingGone With the Wind Revisited
“Your love is a hallucination.” My young student in China wanted to discuss Gone with the Wind, wanted to take months to read and understand it. I read this book when I was about twelve years old, about the same age as my student, Xinlin, in Shanghai. The story engaged me completely but I have…
Keep readingAlbert, the Kid
On Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, it was hot, the tar bubbling. At Belmont Cleaners Albert was minding the counter and the boss was organizing clothes to be picked up. In the back, where it was even hotter, Carlos pressed pants and cursed the heat. Albert was a good Catholic Lebanese boy, about eighteen,…
Keep readingBe My Valentine
Lonely in a foreign country? I was. When I was hired by Cita Hati Sekolah in Surabaya thirteen years ago I had three weeks to pack up my house in Vermont, New England, USA, and head to the airport. I wasn’t sure where Indonesia was and didn’t have much time to look at a map.…
Keep readingExpatriation
Standing on the edge of the highway I held a sign that said “London”. It was cold, early spring, and I was hitching from Newcastle. I was nineteen, and the year, nineteen sixty-four. At a pub that evening a Canadian guy told me, “You know, once it starts it never stops.” He was right and…
Keep readingMy Grandpa
Chicago in the 1940’s, just after the war, some houses I visited had no furniture or maybe just a card table with two chairs like the Honeymooners. I was only four or five. Down the street I went to play with a boy and his sister and they had a broken telephone as the only…
Keep readingTen Years in Indonesia
“Everyone is good at the honeymoon.” Have you ever heard that? Recently some friends in the states moved to San Miguel Allende in Mexico, of course. They were retiring and had heard a lot about the wonderful life there for expats. “Wow! Great! Cool,” we all said on Facebook and other places. Do you know…
Keep readingRaven’s Bread No 1
Thomas Merton, in one of his many books, said something to the effect that, “Monks are like tall trees in the forest, silently purifying the air.” The life of the contemplative centers on quiet purification through prayer. Among the many Zen practitioners of China and Japan, the ones we know about wrote poems…
Keep readingThe Day the Servants Left
from Ricker Winsor’s book Pakuwon City Muslims fast during Ramadan. For a month between sun up and sun down, no water, no food. Caddies pass out on the golf course or quit after nine holes. Some don’t fast and pretend to do so. Some fast quietly. Some swoon dramatically. For the ruling class this Muslim…
Keep readingWhat I Know about Art
What are we doing here in this life anyway? For a lot of people, a six pack of beer and a football game answer that question very nicely. For others it’s family, grandchildren, and community. To be an artist is to not be satisfied by those happy ways. To be an artist is…
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A Search for Meaning 