Brugge Blog

The nominees are set, so Bill Moyers can’t be president this time around, but it seems like he should be put in the running for vice president, or cabinet position or some place where he can have the influence he deserves. Or perhaps he should just be left alone to do what he does best: […]

It isn’t easy writing down what you believe, to commit to words the feelings you hold, either strongly or vaguely, but at least privately. Words may not be the best instrument, but they’re what most of us can use, and they give you boundaries to work within. And I think that what a lot of […]

There are plenty of map projections that show the world on a piece of paper, but when you apply scaling measures that aren’t geographic, you get something very different. You get Worldmapper.
The maps there are powerful. Newspaper stories with tables of numbers or even bar graphs of measures such as wealth or disease are […]

Software development is a team sport. Places can try to hide that fact with cubicles and individual assignments, but the fact remains that putting a system together takes a diverse group of people to pull it off: managers, developers, users, testers, writers, the list of roles goes on. But how often is thought put into […]

It was just a year ago that the family cabin started to change. In 30 years, it has had lots of tweaks to its inside, but they’ve been relatively small. Not fancy, but a place that has the well-worn comfort of familiarity.

Now the clan has grown in size, and when we all want to be […]

When we were in La Antigua, Guatemala last August, we saw what looked like film crews in the streets. Asking around a bit, we found out that they were shooting a film called Looking For Palladin. We never got a good description of what the movie was really about, but there is a story about […]

If there is one thing that festivals in Guatemala don’t lack, it’s color. I’ve seen pictures of Semana Santa in Antigua, where people make elaborate sawdust and flower carpets for processions during Holy Week.
Now I’ve just seen a reference to an annual kite festival held in Santiago, Sacatapequez on Day of the Dead (November […]

Doesn’t this sound like a fancy pants beer?
‘T Smisje Calva Reserva
Delicious notes of candy sugar and wood pleasurably coat the mouth on the first sips of Calva Reserva. The accompanying raisiny malt sweetness is a perfect foil for the temporarily restrained low simmer of alcohol (12%/vol.). As the cloudy, caramel-colored body warms, a tart, ruity, […]

We were talking about kids music this weekend with my sister-in-law and her husband, and playing some of our CDs, when Ralph’s rendition of I Am My Own Grandpa came on. Laughing about how we could never follow the chain of relationships, I thought “someday it would be interesting to sit down and chart it […]

A group of men from our church had a weekend getaway a few weeks ago, a time to relax and spend time together. It was a really good group, with an easy, trusting atmosphere around it all that made for important and healthy sharing.
And I’m glad that it was a place where honesty and feelings […]