It strikes me that Villa de Leyva is the perfect little Colonial town for a lazy vacation. It's 3-4 hours' drive from Bogota, settled in a warm valley, full of restaurants and hotels, and very peaceful and safe. Oodles of stars become visible as night falls. There is...
I'm back in Bogota and working feverishly on new queries, new agents, new chances. At the advice of a particular editor, I queried one last week and was almost instantaneously rejected. But she was nice about it, I suppose. It just reminded me how unpleasant it is to...
What does it mean when something has been self-published that on its face has no literary merit? Does it mean: a) the publishing world is f&%$d? b) readers have no interest in something deep and pensive, but will buy whatever is simple and clich'd? c)...
Hmmm...
Stage actor and part-time hairdresser Nathalie Qadir befriends three polite young Muslim men in her immigrant neighborhood in London; they fill a hole in her heart where her brother once was. She doesn't realize that terrorist financier and ideologue Abn Al Sadr has...
Some of the different ways I saw my mom during my time with her in Deer Trail: Motherly Mom. Looking at the three of us with pride, beaming, telling us in so many words what she thinks of us. Womanly Mom. A woman, almost unknown to me. Proud and grande-Dame-ish....
Well over a hundred data collectors are bouncing around the Colombian countryside, working on surveying over 20,000 households for the evaluation I'm working on. Twenty of them got stopped yesterday in a remote county not far from the birthplace of the FARC. (Side...
Kyna, Dad and I went to Kentucky. You can't go to Kentucky without seeing horses: This one is a stallion that is rented out for his... prowess. If you know what I mean. It's creepy in that they tie up the mares to whom he is... assigned. He goes four times a...
I read an old article by Oliver Sacks yesterday, about the Sabbath and keeping it holy. He was raised Orthodox in the Jewish faith and the Sabbath was really the Sabbath. In Washington DC I used to go to Shabbat dinner with Zahara and other friends and there was...
I'm thinking about my friend Shane today, so I'm going to write about food. I had an amazing meal last weekend with a nice new friend here in Bogota, Raha. Here she is explaining the dishes: [wpvideo W5bbm7rk] [wpvideo 6FxkhzVe] She made us feel really welcome and...