confessions of a reformed tourist
1. I never thought I’d say this, but I haven’t done much of anything on the internet for the last year. I still post from time to time, but I haven’t written anything of substance (here) in ages, and lately I go weeks without even checking my email. This time last year I was posting [...]
One night when Bean was about eight months old, we took the subway from my dad’s house in The Bronx to my friend’s apartment on the Upper East Side. He was still Snugli-bound back then, so it was an easy trip. Pleasant. Fun. We had a good night. He found her stash of cat food [...]
West Indian slang for ejaculate (both the noun and the verb) is “break”. I thought, at first, that this was kind of weird, but the more I thought about it, the more it made perfect sense. Break? Break. Break! Yes. Exactly. There’s also a saying, something that you ask people who are just not hearing [...]
Last week I wrote a post in which I described getting ready to go to work in Grenada. I included this sentence: I wear a white sleeveless linen blouse and jeans that reach my ankles, because only tourists wear shorts, and I am not a tourist. In response, an American friend asked: I’m curious why [...]
And with good reason. Ironing your clothes / cooking your lunch / mopping your floor are activities best performed before the rise of the day’s heat. I sleep in on Sundays, until maybe 8:30. I get up to pee and while I’m in the washroom, he takes the sheets off the bed and puts them [...]
I am mother and daughter, teacher and student, writer and reader. I’m woman and lover, but never have been – and likely never will be – a wife. I am a traveler, and I am fearless. I wear flip-flops in the security line, because it saves time, and I never check luggage if I can [...]
I crossposted yesterday’s “on accents” to my Tumblr, and two of the responses (reblogs) I got were so interesting I can’t resist quoting them here. The first to weigh in was adsinfinitum, who wrote: Another point of interest for me is how people are so determined to assign you an accent. How they feel the [...]
I’m always amused when I hear someone make a definitive declaration regarding his or her lack of accent. Or, even funnier, statements such as “there is no such thing as a British accent”. Because of course you do and of course there is. I can understand how, for example, a person from England might bristle [...]
It occurred to me last week that instead of talking about writing a book about Grenada, I should do it already. (Duh.) It also occurred to me that if I gathered together everything I’ve written in the last five years, and then edited it ruthlessly, I’d find that I’d already written a first draft. So [...]
I had three thoughts when I heard this. The first was: Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s so damn beautiful my nipples are hard. The second was: And thus the Nobel Comittee has finally redeemed itself for that whole Henry Kissinger travesty. Then I sent my brother a text message telling him the [...]
