Learner Sojourner
A Sojourner's Truth and Travels
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Mexico City: Flores y Colores
Posted on April 30, 2018 Leave a Comment
This technicolor dream post is brought to you by the marvels in and around La Ciudad de México and by sunflowers. I’ve grown a love of sunflowers. In recent years, they seem to cross my line of vision everywhere, and when they don’t, I often find myself seeking images. I like how, when seen up close, their […]
Cuba: Seeking Music, Finding Muses
Posted on July 19, 2017 2 Comments
Yo vengo de todas partes, Y hacia todas partes voy: Arte soy entre las artes, En los montes, monte soy.* –“Versos Sencillos” (José Martí) I. Landing […]
The Arab Spring Break: Egypt Edition
Posted on April 30, 2017 6 Comments
“I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it…My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” — Langston Hughes This promises to be a long post. I’ve tried hard to condense it, but this experience is resistant to brevity. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t attempt to encapsulate a trip of this length or magnitude in […]
The Arab Spring Break: Jordan Edition
Posted on April 19, 2017 4 Comments
Checking in luggage is the rookiest of rookie travel moves. I did it, and paid for it. Blindsided by an overzealous agent at the EgyptAir counter at JFK, who insisted on weighing my prized koi fish orange spinner carry on, and finding it five kilos overweight (EgyptAir has a strict 8-kilo carry-on weight limit), I […]
Shall We Gather at the River?: Gullah Voices and Echoes
Posted on July 28, 2016 6 Comments
“My tale begins just before the rising of the sun…Dayclean, we call this, when the day is new and the world is made fresh again.” —from God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man by Cornelia Walker Bailey Katie Underwood is ten years old. Named for the intrepid midwife who delivered countless babies in the Gullah […]
Lost and Found: What I Learned from this Sojourn
Posted on July 10, 2016 2 Comments
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart has one of the most powerful endings in literature. In this novel which chronicles the dramatic rise and ultimate downfall of Okonkwo, a black Ibo clansman, the story is literally and figuratively taken over in its final chapter by the District Commissioner, an unnamed, incredibly minor white character, who […]
Beneath the Mountains Lies Pleasure Valley
Posted on July 7, 2016 Leave a Comment
Deye mon gen mon (Beyond the mountains, there are more mountains.) — Hatian proverb I now know that I needed to come back because my childhood memories of Haiti never included mountains. As a literature teacher, I make it a point to emphasize the importance of context in a piece of writing–historical, cultural, and political, […]
Hot and Cool in Jacmel
Posted on July 5, 2016 6 Comments
I’m writing this post perched on a canopied four-poster bed that rises so far off the floor that, at 5’4″ tall, I either need a running start and a leap, or a chair to climb into it; Ive opted for the chair. The yards of thick mosquito netting that normally drape down from the […]
Art and Craftsmanship: Port-au-Prince Day 2
Posted on July 2, 2016 2 Comments
This will likely not be my last post about art and artistry in Haiti. Art, of both the high and low varieties abounds, and surrounds you even along the dusty, ruined streets that must have once had sidewalks. Artists display their originals, or original copies, on everything from clothes lines to fences. The ubiquitous “Loto” […]
The Jig is Up: A Parting Glance at TSTP
Posted on August 1, 2015 Leave a Comment
“When you do dance, I wish you A wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that.” The Winter’s Tale (IV, iv, 159-161) Each and every Shakespeare’s Globe performance ends with a jig. That’s right, everybody dances. This custom cuts across genres as the star-crossed lovers, deposed monarchs, and bloody corpses we […]
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