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Bismark Palm, spectacular fan
I was recently in my birthplace of Panama. Over ten days it was a visit to some of the prettiest landscapes of my dynamic homeland as well as a return to family.
We had culinary experiences too. In Boquete, a coffee-growing mountain town in the distant province of Chiriqui, we shared a couple of meals with Charlie Collins one of Panama's premier chefs and author of T'ACH: Panamanian Native Cuisine,
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In the Hall of Vertebrates at the Museum of Natural History in New York
I recently read Ed Yong's An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, a big, thick book that I had to prop on my pillow at night. Though it was not easy to read, I am left with bits of knowledge, much of which I will forget, but that leave me with a speechless wonder about this earth that we share with billions of species.
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I will be the mama cat in a week (in addition to being a hotelier for three live-in cats). Sons, daughters-in-law, grand girls, grand boys, grandpa.
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Carmelish Carrasco after graduating with a Master’s in Social Work.
During Covid, not seeing my family, I felt a sense of isolation. I lost my grandmother in Florida during Covid. This grandmother, my dad's mother, lived in Providence when I was 7 or 8. She was bougie in what she wore. Coach from head to toe. "Don't bother to learn to cook," she'd tell me. "Study and you'll be just fine. Do new things."
Read moreShe rephrased what I’d said: “You left your home where you were living rent free to live in a guy’s apartment you found on Craig’s List to make some changes in your community….”
I was speechless. That did sound kind of badass….
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A slow moment at a cafe in Ogunquit, Maine.
There's a writers' guru named Dan Blank who asks writers to answer, "What do you want to say?"
It's mid-August, and I want to keep these thoughts at bay. I want to hold on to sitting with friends in the shade... smacking my arm after the mosquito's left... The streets are empty. I'm feeling slightly aimless (which is good). But here it is. Here is what I've been doing and believing for the last many years:
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At dinnertime on Tuesday—like many of you—I watched a last-minute hearing of the Jan. 6 House Committee.
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Carlos Carrasco, Actor, Director, Producer. Photo courtesy of Rochelle Newman-Carrasco
Carlos Carrasco was born in Panama—as I was—and came to the United States on an acting scholarship. He honed his craft as a classical actor only to discover that in the real world of movies a big and dark Latino would be handed the roles of drug runner and thug.
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Photo by Yoksel Zok at Unsplash
Yellow is the color of the moment. The daffodils with their little heads and pretty ruffled collars and the-tiny petaled forsythia bushes that are bursting open everywhere. And then everything will be pink.
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Elizabeth Lara, Poet. Photograph by Juan Armando Rojas.
Elizabeth spoke to me of grief and a sense of loss. “I had to find a way to hold on to the original me.”
I’d traveled in Europe by myself after college, unfazed by what might make others hesitate. A summer in France introduced me to being a foreigner, how to sink or swim in a society that was not mine. I had no reservations about moving to another country, but I was afraid of marriage. Erasmo talked me into it.