This is a drawing of the baserri Goikoetxebarri, which means the new house up above, where my dad was born. It sits on the edge of the village of Gerrikaitz, which today is incorporated with the town of Arbatzegi to form Munitibar, in the province of Bizkaia. It was the ancestral home of many of […]
Today is dad’s birthday. He would have turned 80. I decided to celebrate his birthday by lying in a hospital bed, much like he did for so many days. Well, ok, it wasn’t like I chose to do this. At the risk of sounding self indulgent or providing too much information, I got an infection […]
Dad would have turned 79 today. I miss you, dad. I’m often asked why I do this. Why did I start this website? Why do I invest so much time in it? Why is the Basque thing so important to me? For a long time, I didn’t really have a good answer. Maybe because it’s […]
Dad died seven years ago this Thanksgiving. I miss you, dad. When I was a kid, seemed to be always working. He wanted to be at the haystack by dawn, so he’d get up in the dark of night, sometimes waking me or one of my brothers to go with him, and head out while […]
Today is my dad’s birthday. He would have turned 78. I miss you dad. My dad had a bit of a temper, especially when I was younger. My brothers and I were on the receiving end of more than one spanking. And dad certainly mellowed as he (or we…?) got older. But the times I […]
Today is my dad’s birthday. He would have turned 77. I miss you dad. Dad was always smart. He just didn’t have much opportunity or stomach for school. When I was a kid, he would always help me with my math, at least before we got into things like algebra and geometry. He knew his […]
Four Basque brothers, four very different ways they experienced the immigrant life. Goikoetxebarri is a typical baserri nestled into the woods just outside of Gerrikaitz, one of the two barrios that together make up the village of Munitibar. Munitibar is small, maybe 500 people, and lies in the heart of Bizkaia, in the center of […]
Five years ago, early on Thanksgiving morning, Dad died. He’d spent the last eighteen years battling a multitude of health problems that stemmed from heart failure and the heart transplant that saved his life. That new heart gave him eighteen more years, but not all of them were wonderful, as a myriad of other issues […]
