Absolute Citrin

When Sheila and I went with our community of Interplay artists to Tukumbo, Malawi, in 2007, I imagined I’d see great poverty, unhappiness, and perhaps even hostility to a group of primarily white people visiting their impoverished village. We went on this trip with one of our global leaders, Masankho Banda, who was born and raised in this village. I was wrong from the start. The people were warm and friendly and greeted us with dance and song upon arrival....

Bardo is the Tibetan term for the time between the critical stages of life, from birth through death and beyond to rebirth. In traditional meaning, there are six bardos, three occurring during life and three arising before and after life. On a secular level, we can see that we are in these transitional times all during our day and through our lives. Those times between meetings (if you can catch your breath), when you arrive home from a trip and...

We just returned from one of our best family holidays in Palm Springs where we watched granddaughter Kyra perform in the Nutcracker, exchanged silly and fun Christmas gifts, hung out in the hot tub and pool, hiked (and saw a magnificent bighorn sheep), shot some good golf with the grandsons and where I lost in the ping pong tournament, badly to grandson Ethan. We all then attended the Fiesta Bowl, driving four hours to Phoenix, where we all watched our...

We’re out in Palm Springs, CA with all our kids and grandkids. We’ve rented a very cool house with a spa, swimming pool, ping pong table and even an arcade video game. The weather has been great unlike back home in Pittsburgh (and about everywhere else). Granddaughter Kyra will love hanging out with her older cousins and she’ll schedule the games and events around the house which will probably include “Diving for Dimes,” and playing “Things The Never Taught You...