Las Galeras
Hi, Most of you reading this did not know me in my younger days. More specifically, you did not know me during my houseplant years. Yes, I once grew houseplants. Lots and lots of houseplants. At one point I had nearly 300 houseplants. Perhaps that the number is excessive doesn’t surprise you, whenever it was […]
Maybe you know more about duck than I do, since “Peking,” “Donald,” “crispy,” “Ugly,” “Odd,” or “Cold” is about the extent of “Duck” for me. Maybe I could stretch the definition to include the idea of bread crumbs on an idyllic pond but for me that’s as far as it’s gone. Until yesterday. Those of […]
Well, it turns out that I come from a racist place. I don’t mean the Dominican Republic; I’m not entirely sure if I’m referring here to the United States, or just to what’s inside my own head. But either way: definitely racist. I suppose the possibility that our nation is racist should not be news […]
Are you familiar with bottle trees? In parts of the American South–places like Mississippi, Alabama, and Takoma Park, Maryland, there is a tradition of stringing empty glass bottles from the branches of trees, or inverting them over twig ends on the trees. The result can be quite lovely and, seemingly, effective. The tradition holds that […]
For a kid who grew up in Pittsburgh or in Seattle, or in the “other” Washington for that matter, thatched roofs have seemed somewhat exotic. For me, a thatch roof brought to mind not a musty damp hovel on a rain-swept heath in medieval England–you know: the place with cats and dogs slipping from the […]