Author Archives: Sharman

Being a Minus can be a plus

We have a very unusual family name: Minus. My father always explained it to people, “It used to be Terminussian but no one could pronounce that so they used the two middle syllables. It’s Armenian.” The ancestors dropped the “ian” … Continue reading

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Discovering Coffee Grove

In my last post, Attacked by a Peacock I ended with my desire to see where and how Dad had lived in Rangoon. By the time the opportunity to visit Burma came, he had been in a nursing home for … Continue reading

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Attacked by a Peacock

Photograph by Rina Caffarella Another of my favourite tales from Dad’s childhood was “How I Was Attacked by a Peacock.” My experience of peacocks then was limited to the handful of bedraggled birds in the local park, pinioned so they … Continue reading

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One time we were so poor…

  When I was growing up I liked to hear my Dad tell stories about his childhood in Rangoon, Burma. He was not a natural storyteller, nor an imaginative man, so his stories were always the same, with the same … Continue reading

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What is a chinthe and why am I chasing it?

  A chinthe is a leogryph or half lion half something else, usually a dog or human, that is often found in pairs guarding pagodas in Burma. The myth explaining the chinthe has certain similarities to the myth of Oedipus. … Continue reading

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