I did a play in New York at the public theater, a Shakespeare play, and M. Night Shyamalan, who is the writer/director of 'The Village,' came and saw me in the play and asked to go to lunch afterwards.
When I first walked in to London, I was so overwhelmed by the village, the sheer volume of people. I was just so excited. You don't know what to expect. So the level of excitement was almost draining, just taking everything in. I was so exhausted after I swam because of all the excitement in the build-up.
I chose to document the lives of people living in a remote village in Alaska called Shishmaref because there we can literally see how climate change is affecting their homes, livelihoods and ultimately their lives.
I knew Bobby Dylan back in the days when he lived in the village. He used to come and see me and sing songs for me, saying they ought to go into my next collected book on American folk music.
I had met a young lady who wanted to be in the theater. It was Judy Holliday. She had somehow fallen down the steps of the Village Vanguard, which still exists today.
During the session of the Supreme Court, in the village of -, about three weeks ago, when a number of people were collected in the principal street of the village, I observed a young man riding up and down the street, as I supposed, in a violent passion.
After so many years, I feel more American than anything else, but I'm also Romanian and whatever other oddities of temperament I picked up elsewhere, in Transylvania or France, for instance. These days, everybody is both an exile and a resident - they don't call it the global village for nothing.
There are 10,000 local governments in the state of New York. Ten thousand! Town, village, lighting district, water district, sewer district, a special district to count the other districts in case you missed a district.
In 1990, my wife and I were married in her village in southwestern Uganda. The festivities went on for three days, and all the while a couple of dozen gray-crowned cranes, with regal bonnets of sun-shot yellow feathers, were pecking and padding around in the adjacent savanna.
When I first worked in Zimbabwe, I was a complete novice. I was doing a study, and I continued to learn more and more through the years. And where I have learned most is in the village, from the communities.
I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old, in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon, cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms.
