The return to Canada has meant a need to change focus — from working with material to create blog posts to working with material to create presentations. These commitments were made as part of the Transylvania research trip project, but meeting them has interfered with my capacity to return here to create a satisfy blog… Read More Back in Canada update

That’s the term for the kind of thing I’m working on. And like most passion projects, this one is fuelled by a moment of inspiration. It was here, in the Homoród Valley in 2013, that I first felt the urge to tell the story of the Hungarian-speaking people who live here. I was sitting in… Read More Passion project.

You can’t separate the churches from the sausages, the bright green hills from the wool embroideries, the pálinka from the kisses (left then right). You can’t separate language from religion, or the future from the past. This is Transylvania. This pocket of farmland encircled by the sylvan treasure of the inner Carpathian foothills is the… Read More Immersion–part two

“Say yes to everything.” As an operating principle, this approach has worked out well for me. I said “yes” to helping an MA student in art history practice her English—and as a result was shown details on a tour of the old, walled city that I would have otherwise missed. Here, in the oft visited… Read More Immersion–part one

I read once, somewhere, that if you feel confused, you’re learning. I’ve been learning. In my dream life, I’ve been driving a car under water. Awake, I feel I walk around submerged. But coming back from Mészkő on Sunday evening, I felt at last within the landscape, present, with a clear, if limited, perception. I… Read More One Foot on the Ground

Poetry. Perfume. (Lots of perfume.) Coloured eggs and cake. (Lots and lots of cake.) The ancient custom of “sprinkling” is still practiced in Hungarian villages on Easter Monday. It’s a suit and tie event for men as they set off for a round of visiting the homes of women, bottles of perfume in hand. Which,… Read More Sprinkling Day in Alsófelsőszentmihály*

Starbucks. The sign had my complete attention. For a moment. I’ve been through this before. A Starbucks sign is not a guarantee. Coffee, to be sure. But coffee is easy to be had. In this town, you barely have to walk a block to get a coffee.… Read More All for a cup of joe.

Now that the sun is out and my shutter release hand is out of the cast, I thought I’d give you a sense of what this ancient city looks like.… Read More A few photos of the city.

Yesterday was Flower Communion Sunday at the Downtown Unitarian Church in Kolozsvár. The date Unitarians mark this celebration varies, but the practice is the same around the world. Each congregant brings a flower, symbolic of their unique human nature, and places it in a vase, a gesture indicating they participate in the ceremony of their own free will. At the end of the service, each takes a flower from a vase other than the one they brought, a symbol of valuing the human dignity of others.… Read More Flower Communion Sunday

Mészkö is the Hungarian word for “limestone” and on Wednesday evening three of us headed to Mészko, to the Alabaster Church… Read More Field Trip: Student Sermon in the Alabaster Village