Errata!
A blog is scary: you publish it without the time to let it absorb the inevitable additions, changes, and deletions. In my last post, sent out for all the world to see (well, maybe not ALL the world), I noted that…Continue reading→
The Long Journey to the Feria Fluvial
Valdivia’s riverside market, with its colorful awnings and stands of fish, seafood, regional foods and crafts, seemed the perfect place to start my explorations. This is what it took to get there: By Plane The 24 hours of flights had moments…Continue reading→
Ready … Set …
In my novel-in-progress, Clara Albright arrived in Valdivia over forty years ago. This after a whirlwind, forbidden courtship with Jorge Valle, a Chilean graduate student in West Virginia at the time. Some ten years ago, tour guide Pete Snyder reached the…Continue reading→
Magic Domes
Even cheap plastic snow globes have an element of magic about them. Flick your wrist, and the flakes swirl down upon a tropical beach, the Empire State Building, a steepled church at Christmastime, even a favorite photo you insert into the…Continue reading→
Zafacones and Other Curiosities
During the many years I lived in Puerto Rico, a garbage can was a zafacón. Much to my surprise, when I used the word in a group of Spanish speakers here in Spokane, I got blank stares. Zafacón, it seems, derives…Continue reading→
Valdivia: A River Runs through It
Like Spokane, Valdivia is bisected by a river. In point of fact, three major and several smaller rivers snake along the lush plains bordering Valdivia, eventually coming together as the Río Valdivia and emptying into the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps best known…Continue reading→
The Great Chilean Earthquake
On May 22, 1960, the world’s strongest instrumentally documented earthquake occurred off the coast of southern Chile. Registering a magnitude of 9.5, the Great Chilean Earthquake felled buildings, tore out bridges, capsized ships, blocked rivers, split streets, sank land, and created…Continue reading→
Virtual Travel
Decades ago when writing travel pieces in Puerto Rico, I joked that the greatest test of one’s mastery of the genre would be to write a successful piece about a never-visited place. It seemed a rather fanciful, far-fetched idea. Not so…Continue reading→
Questions from the Curious
Several questions keep popping up when people learn of my upcoming adventure, a month-long trip to Chile in March. Here are three of them. “Why?” Most of my adult life was spent in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There I taught university-level…Continue reading→
Chile: The String Bean
Geographically, Chile seems an impossible place. It is long and thin in exaggerated fashion—some 2,600 miles from north to south and never more than 200 miles wide. Its two constants are the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Andes Mountains…Continue reading→