We are BIG podcast fans in our house. I listen to podcasts everyday, and my kids most nights. As well as supplementing (or replacing…) a live human being reading a story at bedtime, we play them in the car, and just this week I had the genius idea of putting them on for each kid […]
During the United States primaries, I had to consciously limit my fascination with US politics and remind myself that it was getting daily updates on the campaign trail shenanigans wasn’t much different to reading about foreign celebrities in gossip magazines. I had better things to do with my time and attention. And then Trump got elected. […]
Last month, the newly elected Parliament of Myanmar chose Htin Kyaw as the country’s first non-military President since 1962. It was another step towards democracy, and a happy one, but Myanmar’s path to recovery is likely to be long and windy. The military still controls much of the government and has veto power over constitutional changes. They could […]
In November 2015 my family moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to work with the NGO Partners Relief & Development, to help bring free, full lives to children affected by conflict and oppression, particularly people in and from Myanmar (Burma). Two months in, here’s the third of a short series of updates on what life is like here. You […]
In November 2015 my family moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to work with the NGO Partners Relief & Development, to help bring free, full lives to children affected by conflict and oppression, particularly people in and from Myanmar/Burma. Two months in, here’s the second of a short series of updates on what life is like here. You can […]
In 2023, Lent begins Wednesday, 22 February We’re spoilt by the church calendar at this time of year! We’ve just had four weeks of candle-lighting at Advent, culminating, in our household, with this delightful moment on Christmas Day: Now we’re coming to the end of the two-week Christmas season, and then it’s only a month […]
In November 2015 my family moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to work with a small, nimble NGO, Partners Relief & Development, to help bring free, full lives to children affected by conflict and oppression, particularly people in and from Myanmar/Burma. Soon after we got here, I wrote a bit about the state of life in […]
I love a good list. Here are the top ten posts of 2015, in terms of how many times they’ve been read. There were some surprises, even for an avid stats-page-watcher like me. The oldest one is from three years ago, but eight of the ten are from this year. I like to think I’m […]
I remember when I first read a report of how women and girls were suffering under the Taliban in pre-9/11 Afghanistan. I think I was about sixteen. Widows were starving – literally dying of hunger – because they weren’t allowed to shop for food without a male guardian. Girls were kicked out of schools and […]
Have you gasped or shaken your head or cried over refugees this week? Was it when you saw a picture of Aylan Kurdi, a little boy wearing sneakers just like my son’s, lying dead on a beach? Was it when you saw a picture of him and his brother, smiling on a sofa, before their […]