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Posts published by “Kyle Walker”

Kyle is a physicist-turned-scribbler educated in Tulsa, Vienna and New York. Raised in the desert wilds of New Mexico, Kyle is not a cowboy—though he has been on a horse two or three times. Kyle’s writing has appeared in the Bigheart Times, This Land Magazine, and Inverse.com. Kyle is the founding editor of the New York Transatlantic

A cinematic introduction to SápmiAile and grandmother

A cinematic introduction to Sápmi

By Kyle Walker on February 20, 2016

The arctic landscapes of Sápmi bear a surprising resemblance to my native New Mexico. The sky opens up; the vegetation retreats, as though satisfied to play a supporting role in the visual drama; in both places, the uninterrupted vista is the star. But here, I think, the similarities probably end. Sápmi is a land of fjords, lakes, rivers and marshes. New Mexico is a desert with but one big(ish) river and a small ensemble of other streamlets.

Now—I have never been to Sápmi, the Sámi homeland that stretches through the northern reaches of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia’s Kola peninsula. I made my strange comparison through the magical (and distorting) lens of cinema. Scandinavia House, the New York home of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, is screening new films from Scandinavia all spring, and Friday’s selection was 7 Sámi Stories, a project of the International Sámi Film Institute.

Confronting Italy’s colonial ‘adventure’ in Ethiopia

Confronting Italy’s colonial ‘adventure’ in Ethiopia

By Kyle Walker on February 13, 2016

[su_vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/84273170″]

The most startling moment in “If Only I Were That Warrior”—and there are many startling moments—might be when Giuseppe, an Italian agronomist and military history enthusiast, offers a short catalogue of “Italian” habits adopted by Ethiopians in the years since the Fascist occupation of Ethiopia. From Italians, the Ethiopians took their “love of food and coffee” and the “social bustle in the evenings,” Giuseppe tells us.

It’s strange that a history buff and specialist on tropical agriculture should be so obviously unaware of the terrible irony of this statement: Coffee originated in Ethiopia. Giuseppe’s slip, though it is the most surreal, is hardly the most horrifying example of contemporary deafness to history that surfaces in “If Only I Were That Warrior.”

Euro-optimism despite Euro-crises

Euro-optimism despite Euro-crises

By Kyle Walker on February 10, 2016

Anthony Teasdale, the director general of the European Parliamentary Research Service, gave a talk February 8 at Deutsches Haus NYU, replacing Klaus Welle, who had been scheduled to speak. Welle, secretary-general of the European Parliament, was called back to Brussels on short notice to for the build-up to negotiations over David Cameron’s proposed European reforms.

It’s fitting that Teasdale should step in at precisely this moment—when the apparent shortcomings of the European Union seem to widen the Channel every day—to offer an optimistic view. In his estimation, the European Union does not get nearly enough credit for the efficiency with which it completes its routine tasks and is therefore unfairly cast as a doomed polity.

“I am basically allergic to the defeatist or declinist assumptions and philosophy which we very often find in public discussion about the European Union,” he said. “I have been surprised and encouraged by the ability of the member states to work together. This is not a Panglossian view about how the EU operates, don’t get me wrong, but we should always bear in mind the underlying resilience that the system seems to have established.”