General ramblings

Still can't get over how good that article was about the World War II bombings in Germany and Japan. A lot of the European commentators I read, whether in the pages of the Guardian, the Telegraph, or Sign and Sight, have a marvelous knowledge and writing style. Makes me want to traipse off to the Continent...

Wole Soyinka was honored at Harvard on Wednesday. The former Nobel laureate got tributes from fellow prize winners Nadine Gordimer (1991), Derek Alcott (1992), and Toni Morrison (1993), with Skip Gates presiding. It sounds like a wonderful event. My knowledge of Nigerian literature (and African literature in general) isn't very large. I read "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe in freshman year of high school (1992-93) ... other discoveries were Francophone works ("Xala," "L'enfant noir") in a French literature class in my senior year of college (2000). Africa has been somewhat in the news lately with the release of "Hotel Rwanda" and the strife in the Sudan. But I feel we don't know much about its countries and peoples, and I'm not sure how helpful the media is in increasing our understanding.

Stopped by MIT yesterday to check out a model of the Israeli security barrier, which was a part of Palestinian Awareness Week. On Saturday, there's a discussion about the Israel-Palestine crisis that I'll probably attend.