I’ve spun so many yarns about Cuenca to friends over the years that the tales are now woven together like an old sweater fitted by repetition and patches of lint like woolly lichen. Considering all of the changes we have been through of late, it seemed like a good time to revisit some of my...
A friend of mine got a tattoo the other day. The last few months have been wearying and she needed a talisman to give her strength, an indelible guide leading her out of the cruel cyclone that has caused so many to lose their way and become disoriented. She was exhausted by the hysterical panting...
We live to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. --Anaїs Nin. Let this book as it ends remember the hand that wrote it. the eyes that slowly learned its alphabet, the thumb that peeled back its pages. The days were marked beforehand: phases of the moon, pockmarks of thunderous rain...
“You can’t escape. Your heart will be broken, too.” This was how Jake introduced himself as he slumped against my table. It was a balmy evening, the cafe was full as he crumbled into one of the last available chairs. He went on: “I have never been married, other than a time or two when I was...
We got our first storm in what seemed like forever the other day. It was well past due. The Southern Ecuadorian Andes rely on a steady diet of rain, but this season has been parched by the weather phenomenon known as La Niña. Many of the family farmers that we rely on to produce our vegetables...
On December 10, 1869, Wyoming Territorial Governor John Allen Campbell, citing a “progression of understanding,” signed an act of the Territorial Legislature granting white women the right to vote, the first U.S. state or territory to grant suffrage to women. On September 6, 1870, Louisa Ann Swain...
Unlike news reporting, where timeliness and deadlines prevail, composing a weekly column requires diligent patience. Folks often offer vignettes, eager for me to quickly pluck and dissect the highlights into a story, but a written commentary is not something that can be rushed, manufactured or...
The restaurant business is a difficult undertaking no matter how you slice it. For the patrons, it is only after the rent, utilities and credit card bills are paid, as well as the other myriad expenses of daily life are set to rest, that they decide it is time to reward themselves with an evening...
My long-ago girlfriend, Sherry, finally won me over. I remember distant times when I could hardly wait for her to get home so I could re-play the latest singer-songwriter composition I heard that moved me nearly to tears. She was always patient, and always sweet. “That was nice,” she would say. ...
Perhaps I did not understand the remark correctly. He said, “I am moving away from Cuenca because the weather here is ‘getting old’.” I wondered what he meant but readily agreed that the mysteries of weather is as old as when unseen clouds drifted over an unpeopled world. Is the weather really...
We’ve taken the transcripts of the first two debate sessions and summarized what we believe where the main points of each candidate’s responses, to the five topics that were chosen by voter polling.
Some of the candidate’s responses were amusing, some almost non-sensical, and some quite accusatory. Continue reading
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