The Varied Pictures of me in the eyes across the city streets and trains The Cure noted long ago in their angst-riddled voice “I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you, that I almost believe that they’re real.” It is a haunting song that has reverberated […]
Daily Prompt: Teaching The Art of Being an Other On a dark, gray rainy day on a train platform in the small town of Ripoll, Spain I awaited the delayed RENFE (train) that would take me back to Barcelona. I had just had a fabulous time in this […]
Right off the bat I have to note this was meant to be an old-school reflection in the vein of the recent social media phenomenon of throwback Thursdays. Today is Friday. I kind of missed the boat on that one. That’s just how this week has been rolling. […]
Life is tough when your most redeeming quality is that you “suck”. I’m not passing judgment, just thinking of the unfortunate little annelids that we collectively refer to as leeches. Leeches were the go-to treatment for medieval physicians (although after hundreds of years of use, Dark Age medical […]
On an episode of CSI NY (Crime Scene Investigation), this past season, there was a murdered male whose body parts were left scattered throughout the four corners of Hell’s Kitchen (Episode: Sláinte). The investigators brought the torso back to the medical examiner’s office; where the ME stated […]
Wow! In Curacao I am a mommy. As a brown mother of a white baby in the United States, I often get mistaken for being the nanny. Such a statement may sound a bit odd to some of you; but that is the state of affairs of racial […]
This morning, after a long travel day yesterday that was followed by pool time, I definitely had to “do” my hair: Wash, blow dry, flat iron. At the end of this modern-day self-inflicted torture ritual, I was quite happy. The weather in Curacao while hot, is a very […]
American Playwright William Saroyan once said, “A man’s [or woman’s] ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography”. This is doubly true with Hispanics. Unintentionally, by choosing the descriptor “Hispanic” in the title of this post, I am making a personal choice as […]
The ability to “pass” is often a loaded term and a loaded action. My son and I both can “pass” in different contexts for different ethnic or racial groups. When I visited Egypt, they thought I was French. When I lived in Spain, they thought I was Tunisian. […]