Sunday, December 14, 2008

I am no good at handling difficult people

…Most writers on the subject agree the weather did change for the worse, but the Inuit—with whom the Greenlanders shared summer hunting grounds to the north, and a sometimes uneasy, violent relationship—had no trouble living in the harsher conditions. Indeed, if the Vikings had been more open to the ways of the Inuit—people they referred to as skraelings, or ‘wretches’—they might have been able to survive, fishing and harpooning, insulated with seal blubber, warm and well-fed through every season. The problem, it seems, lay with their priorities. Cattle and Christ remained the centre of the Greenlanders life, even as they began to starve. The Vikings, throughout their reign and expansion throughout Europe, were renowned for their ability to adapt, but as time went on, the Greenlanders stood increasingly still, as if waiting for the earth to relent and admit their way of life…

Recently

• • Berlin Guidebook
  • A short submission to a guidebook on Berlin, focusing on the city's thoroughly awesome public transport network. There's more.
• • NY, 1972
  • A piece, published in the Berlin journal The Extra Room, on an experimental psychological treatment pioneered in New York in the 1970s with heroin-addicted Vietnam vets. There's more.
• • I am no good at handling difficult people
  • The mysterious case of the Vikings in Greenland, and how their disappearance explains why old Australian women won't eat kangaroo. There's more.
• • The Tao of Rejuvenation
  • The Tao of Rejuenation is a comprehensive guide to traditional health and healing. Originally penned by an American Chinese doctor and herbalist, I rewrote the manuscript for its publication by Random House. It's out now. There's more.