Apartment Choice

How it would feel meeting relations of the people who inspired the creation of characters in an epic novel? Evelyn Osagie met those linked with the globally acclaimed Things Fall Apart at Ogidi, Anambra State. As guests made their way into Ogidi Town Hall that afternoon to pay their last respects to the man who was known as the Ikenga and the Ugonabo of Ogidi, the statue of the legendary warrior Ezechuamagha welcomed them with his staff in hand. Little did they know that it was no ordinary statue. He is the town’s progenitor from whom sprang the four quarters of Ogidi-Uru, Akanano, Ikenga and Ezinkwo and nine villages: Uru, Ogidiani, Ezi-Ogidi, Adazi-Ogidi, Nkwelle-Ogidi, Ikenga, Abo-Ogidi, Ire-Ogidi and Umuru in Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State. The town, which has since become a reference point for the literary-minded, continues to inspire those willing to draw inspiration from the ancestral home of the iconic novelist, the late Prof. Chinua Achebe, the Ugo...

In a recent friendly telephone conversation , Russian President Vladimir Putin may well have exclaimed to U.S. President Donald Trump , "Darn that dream I dream each night, but it haunts me and it won't come true." It would be a timely commentary on present day Russia . On this 100th anniversary of the October 1917 Russian Revolution , it is  useful to assess the existence and the failure of the dreams of 20th century Russian Bolsheviks with their aspirations for a new society and a world Communist revolution , and the consequent disillusionment of the faithful, and their sad fate, resulting from the disastrous reality of the Soviet regime led by Josef Stalin. Compelling narratives have been related concerning the drama and tragedy of the Old Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union in powerful and compelling works by Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Victor Kravchenko, among others. Now, the narrative is recounted in a massive 1,100 page, brilli...

Good morning and welcome to the Saturday Morning Quilt Break ! Today I’d like to tell you a story, one that I’ve wanted to tell almost since the day I started working here seven years ago except I didn’t have an ending until a few months ago. If I were the hero of a quilting comic book series , I believe this would be considered my origin story. So settle in with your beverage of choice because I’m going to take you back a ways. A long time ago, during my senior year of high school, my parents offered to allow me to take a gap year between high school and college as long as I spent my time doing something worthwhile. As they put it, “You can live at home and volunteer at a homeless shelter if you want, but you can’t just spend a year working at Robinson’s-May,” which is where I was working at the time. For almost my entire childhood, my parents, younger brother and I lived in a 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom condo in Van Nuys, which is smack-dab in the middle of the sprawling San Ferna...