After five years of travel, I am not on an extended vacation. The road is my home. It is like religion to me because it helps me fill in some of the gaping holes in what I know and believe. It feeds my spirit and challenges me. But now, I realize I may not be able to travel for what could feel like a long time. Although I don’t know how, my life is going to change.
I am in rural Louisiana this week to get some inspiration for the finishing touches on my novel. I have gotten some inspiration alright, but not the kind I was expecting. Truth is truly stranger than fiction, but if I tell you why, somebody might have to kill me. Joking. But it occurs to me.
I am still in Singapore and I still have a little jet lag so last night at 3am, I started reading the news. And I noticed something by accident — the photos on top of the headlines seemed to be all white men. This surprised me partly because the news feed on my phone, Flipboard, only sends me articles from what are generally considered to be left-leaning news organizations, like the NYT, The Nation, CNN, MSNBC, and The Atlantic.
So I did a little survey. I flipped through the first 50 articles and counted how many photos showed only white men. And guess what?
Mural painted by school students in New Iberia, Louisiana.
Last Friday, in a small town in rural Louisiana, the state’s 16th Judicial District Court rescheduled a preliminary hearing to address procedural matters in a lawsuit described in nine double-spaced pages.
Ho hum, not usually the beginning of a great story, right?
Wyoming is cowboy country. Yeah, we all know that but being here puts an exclamation point on the concept. And speaking of punctuation marks, lifelong friend, Sarah, and I are here for a six-day writing retreat with author Page Lambert and a dozen other people who, in this part of the country, would be called “dudes.” We all came to write but, since you can do that pretty much anywhere, we also came for the horses, knowing they would be a huge distraction. Continue reading
Growing up in greater Los Angeles (it’s greater than San Berdoo, I guess), I lived near communities that were Chicano, Latino, Hispanic and cholo, so I felt a special kind of nostalgia seeing dozens of low riders lead yesterday’s Carnaval parade in San Francisco’s Mission District. Continue reading
Sometimes in my travels, I learn a little more about a place than meets the eye. The small town of New Iberia is one of those places. It is one of Louisiana’s oldest and most historic. Straddling both sides of the beloved Bayou Teche, it is the center of the state’s sugar cane production. Locals are friendly and affectionately call their town “Da Berry.” Visitors come to tour the elegant plantation house called Shadows on the Teche, New Iberia’s charming downtown, and the jungle garden on Avery Island.
On Tuesday, I got hit in the head more than a couple of times with green or silver beads but, unfortunately, not a coconut. Coconuts are what you want the people on the Zulu parade floats to throw at you.
Camino Milagro 