Category Archives: travel

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Carpe Diem


Much to my good fortune and hopefully the readers of my blog next week, I have the unexpected opportunity to visit Leogane, one of the towns west of Port-au-Prince, closest to the epicenter of the earthquake.  Because of this, I’m having to interrupt my series on Haitian art for a day or two.  Sorry about this, but please understand I almost never have the opportunity to visit the field and expect this travel with positively impact posts next week.

Thanks you for your patience also, if I do not read your blogs for the next couple days, as I try to maximize this opportunity.   See you soon—-

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Stumping for Haitian Art: Gorgeous Gardens in Port-au-Prince


I had a close encounter with garden art last week—

An unexpected one at that.

Regular readers of my blog know that I’m a visual artist—of sorts—self-taught, poor, and living in exile on a Caribbean island, where electricity is in short supply, political stability is even harder to come by, and cholera is spreading like good gossip in a gaggle of girls.  I’ve shared my work in previous posts.  I love art, support art, enjoy it in all its incarnations, shapes, and sizes.

But it surprised even me last week, when an artistic enterprise unfolded in my own Port-au-Prince back yard—one uninitiated by me.

Ever since last spring when Sara moved into our house on a hill—Morne Calvaire (where we’re told a new neighbor is Baby Doc Duvalier), the land-lady has promised a garden, and last week she delivered, arriving with a landscape artist who installed a stunning rock garden near our front door.

We were happy.  We were actually thrilled.  However, we were not prepared for act two, which unfolded the following day.

It was morning; the sky was clear, blue bold enough to brighten even the most bored of bloggers.  I was writing, enjoying light that angled through my wall of windows.  While I was working, however, the dogs alerted me to a noise outside, one I might have otherwise ignored. Thank God for canine clamor.

There on the hillside that slants down and away from our house, three men, our landscape artist included, pushed and pulled, grunted and groaned the most massive of stumps toward a wall and fence that border the back of our garden.

I couldn’t imagine why.  What was the purpose behind this effort?  Why had Sisyphus himself shown up on my Haitian hillside?

What concerned me most, however, from my interpretation of signs and signals being gestured below, was an apparent plan to heave the stump over the wall and through the fence cemented into it.  I watched and wondered, watched and wondered some more till I was sure the plan indeed involved such fence bull-dozing, before running out to get our security guard to intervene and interrupt this planned assault.  Within seconds Sonny came running, riffle gesturing the men away from ruining our fence.

It was soon discovered via a phone call to our landlady that, having forgotten the fence was attached to the top it, she had asked the men to remove the stump by pushing it over the top of the wall.  Our stump-movers extraordinaire interpreted her instructions quite literally, intending to force the tree through the fence in an effort to accomplish the task.  So much for common sense.

Stump removal ceased for the day.

The men then returned the following morning, removing a section of fence, forcing their burden over the top of the wall, lowering it with ropes into the back of a truck on the other side, and replacing the offending section of fence, before departing—

I assumed forever.

However, the following morning, while I was again writing, a horn honked outside our gate, the dogs barked like insane caricatures of canine companionship, and I soon heard the shouting of what turned out to be seven men.  Within minutes massive crashing commenced on the deck above, more shouting, still more housing-rattling crashes, shouting and crashing, shouting and crashing, until I simply had to investigate.

The stump had returned.

It was now living on our patio, puzzling me, puzzling indeed.  I like trees as much at the next semi-green ex-pat on the island, but REALLY, did we want this stump on our patio?

Over the next several days, however, Dicton Gaston, our new gardener guy answered that question for me, proving more and more a sculpting savant, as the stump morphed from this:

Into this:

Dicton Gaston is a gardening genius.

Dicton Gaston proves art emerges from even the most unlikely places.

Dicton Gaston proves that in Port-au-Prince, though ex-dictators may show up unannounced at airports, though they’ll be arrested and released and move onto the mountain where you live, art can come from equally surprising places, in delightfully surprising packages.

So, this week, as long as the ex-dictator can maintain his EX-dictator status, as long as protesters don’t take to the streets and shut down the city, as long as posts can go as planned, this week I’ll bring you a series on Haitian art, hoping to remind you—

Port-au-Prince may be leveled, reduced to a dead stump of its former self, discarded on a hillside, in ruin.  Haiti may be broken, lost, and nearly forgotten, but still, like Dicton’s stump, it can occupy a prominent place, a patio blooming, green, and living once again.

A work of genuine genius.

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Blogging with Conscience: How Your Voice Can Make a Difference


I have a confession to make—

I’m at a loss—

A complete, honest-to-goodness, in-a-good-kind-of-way loss—cause I have no idea—no earthly idea (in a world where sometimes bad things happen to good people) how to thank those of you who reached out and supported Haiti yesterday.  Whether you yourself posted about the earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince a year ago, commented on my blog, or simply read any other Haiti post, whether you’re reading for the first time today or for the twenty-seventh, I thank you.

Whoever you are, where ever you are, if you are reading this, you are, at least indirectly, supporting the recovery effort in Haiti.  And, good God, please know how grateful I am for that—so truly thankful for your caring, your sharing, your giving voice to the voiceless!

I’m one of those people who believe writing has the ability to make a difference in the world.  In fact, I created a program called “Writers without Borders” that took a group of university writing students to India, where we completed a service learning project with Habitat for Humanity.  We spent two weeks in the slums of New Delhi this past May, interviewing families and creating promotional material that Habitat India could use on its website.  We wrote feature articles, photo essays, even created an audio slide show.  It was a profound experience for all of us, but more importantly it was an opportunity to realize how writing, in very practical ways, can make the world a better place.  It was an opportunity to be that difference.

Mother and child in New Delhi slum (photo by Kathryn Reid)

As someone who teaches composition, I believe it’s important to emphasize to students (and by extension to all of us who write), that good writing amounts to more than style, that quality writing can also be a matter of conscience, that we, as writers, are obligated to use our gifts wisely and sometimes that means using words to benefit others, to speak for those who are otherwise silent.

Given this, I’d remind those of you who blogged for Haiti yesterday, and all of you who write for any reason, that words have power—power to change the world—power to make Port-au-Prince a better place—power to make a difference in your home town, on the street where you live.

I don’t know exactly what we as bloggers can do for Haiti, how concretely we could organize to make the world a better place, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Do any of you have ideas, dreams, strategies?

Alone, I am only one voice, but together we’re a chorus capable of greatness.

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Gallery Day: Gone Graphic Galore


If all went according to plan, it should be Sunday and I should have arrived in Haiti last night.   So, in honor of that arrival, I’ll share some graphic drawings done over the last decade, some more recent than others.  I’m wanting to upload this art before I leave the US and schedule these pieces to post during my travel and transition.  You’ll see, I have a thing for “eyes.”  Hope you enjoy!

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Triple “A”: Art, Apology, and Anniversary


A few updates on this travel day.  (Yes, hopefully I’ll be in Port-au-Prince by Saturday evening.)  Be sure to keep reading, as I’ll share some new art at the end.

First, I want to apologize for not reading anyone’s blog yesterday.   Leaving a house for several months and traveling internationally with a dog require a good bit of preparation.  Given this, I’ve been insanely busy over the last couple of days, so please forgive this lapse.  Actually, reading your posts is a favorite activity of mine, so I promise to get back to regular reading early next week.

Second–yesterday, it was a month since I was Freshly Pressed, so since I’ll be traveling today, I thought you might enjoy looking at that post.  I know it’s not been that long, but so many of you have only begun reading my blog in the last 2 or 3 weeks, a decent number may not have seen it yet.  If you haven’t read “A Tale of Miserable Failure: Moanings of a Second Language Learner”–about my struggle to learn French–click here.

In the event that you have read that piece, I’ll also include here a few pieces of art, you might enjoy.  These include a number of color pencil drawings I did a decade or so ago:

I will try to upload more art before I leave the US and make it available between now and my arrival in Port-au-Prince.  No guarantees, but I will try!

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Luxuries Most-Missed in Haiti: an Inventory


Item #2—(Without a doubt)—bandwidth—

First a bit of context—

Most of you reading this post will do so using a high-speed internet connection, the speed of which exceeds the old dial-up connection by hundreds of times.  Do most of you even remember how slow dial-up was?  Yes, I know, when you think “dial-up,” you think dinosaur, not so much from the last decade, but from the remote history of the previous century.  (Does anyone even use dial-up any more?)

More context—

I have given up my career teaching writing to live on island with the infrastructure of 19th-Century London, given it up, hoping to make meaning from the work of ACTUAL writing, rather than the work of merely teaching writing.  Given this, the tools of the trade tend to matter.  At least they matter to me.

Herein lies my problem—namely that I’m blogging, and blogging requires bandwidth—or, at the very least, the option of up-loading text and images at a reasonably decent speed—and by “decent” I mean—able to post 1000 words and one photo in not more than 8 hours. 

(Let me be perfectly clear—I’m not talking about writing time—I’m referring to the time it takes to upload a word document and a photo or two—something that from our home in Kentucky I can do in a matter of seconds—copy, paste, save, upload (image), save, post—not a complicated or time-consuming process—5 minutes max, if literally everything imaginable goes wrong.)

Not so in Port-au-Prince—

Not so by a long shot—

For example—

One day over a month ago, I decide to change my blog’s theme (big mistake), which ultimately involves uploading a new header image (even bigger mistake). 

The process begins around 9 in the morning.  I have been awake for several hours—since 5, actually.  I’ve had my French lesson, which is challenging and something I sometimes even hate. (See “A Tale of Miserable Failure: Moanings of a Second Language Learner” to fully appreciate my struggles with the language.)  I have been to the gym—

I am eager to get started but remember that posting to my blog the day before and the day before had not gone well—had taken considerable time—

Here’s how it all goes down—

9:15 am: I make myself a cup of coffee.  I need to be fully fortified.  Caffeine should do the trick.

9:21am: I position myself on the corner of the couch, open laptop.

9:23 am: Click the Internet Explorer icon on my desktop and wait for my Yahoo home page to load.

9:26am: Still waiting.

9:27am: Text begins appearing on the screen.

9:30am: Text still loading.

9:33am: The first image—a photo of Michelle Obama—begins appearing.

9:35 am: More photos———

9:38am: With Yahoo fully loaded, I decide to forego checking email.  (It might take too long.) 

9:39am: Sigh—click “WordPress Dashboard” on Favorites drop down menu.

9:43am: Dashboard still loading.

9:50am: I decide against checking stats.  (It might take too long.)

9:51am: Sigh—click “Appearance.”—Sigh—Click “Theme.”

Fast forward————-

10:01am: First page of themes fully loaded.

(You see where this is going)

Fast forward——————-

Around 6 in the evening Sara comes home. 

I am not in the best of moods.  I am not welcoming.  I am not gracious when asked how my day has been. 

I share.

Apparently, I share too much.

I share too vigorously.

I use a few too many expletives.

“You wanna know how my day has been?”  The rhetorical question is Sara’s first clue—things may not have gone well.

“I’ll tell you how my day has been.”  Sara takes a step back.  I have that look in my eye.

“I have just spent 8 hours pounding my f—ing head against a f—ing virtual wall.  And I’ve accomplished  nothing.   Absolutely.  Nothing.”

“Nothing?”  Now Sara has the look—duck and cover—duck and cover!

“Nothing—a big, fat, mind-numbing NOTHING!”

“In that case, I think I’ll get something to eat.”  Sara leaves the guest room, where I am hovering as close to the router as humanly possible without morphing into router myself.  I’m hoping it might increase my chances.  Improve my reception. 

I’m hoping it will keep me sane and Sara able to live with me, not living with enough bandwidth.

Fast forward several weeks—————–

Sara shares the other morning, once we’ve decided to schedule my return to Haiti, “I’ve had Steve from IT working on our internet connectivity.”

I’m thinking—

Wise woman.

Maybe this means it will only take half a day, a mere 4 hours to post 1000 words and one photo.

I’ll keep you posted—

I hope.

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Haiti in your Face


I’m pleased to share——-(drum roll)—————

I will be heading back to Haiti Saturday, after 3 weeks in the US—21 days so far since my American Airlines flight landed in Miami and I had my first night in several months with an uninterrupted supply of electricity.  I guess Friday will be my last for the next 90 days or so.

Which raises the question—

What comforts from home will I miss most in Haiti?  Over the next several days, I’ll share them here, a way to gear up for this transition.

Clearly, however, electricity tops the list.

Now, I’ve been without power before in the US, without the luxury of electricity for 6 days straight during an ice storm in Kentucky some years ago.  But being without this utility here at home is entirely different from being without in Haiti. 

For example, no electricity for several days means near disaster in most of North America.  No one knows what to do or how to manage the tasks of daily living, so folks function on the adrenaline panic produces during times of crisis.  Citizens of Kentucky jump into fully fueled cars, drive to Lowes or Home Depot, grab all the batteries, flashlights, and candles money can buy this side of Port-au-Prince.  Normal life is temporarily interrupted. 

It takes several powerless days to shift into “picnic mode” and celebrate with neighbors round a fireplace, all hoping to stay warm on icy February nights.  

People play games.  They pop popcorn on the stove top (gas, of course).  They become families and neighborhoods once again–helping one another survive this bout of being without. 

The local utility company may take longer than they’d like to get things up and running, but folks maintain a basic faith in the system, a security that only a strong and stable infrastructure provides. 

They believe.  They know. 

The lights will come back on and all will be right with the world—a reality interpreted largely in terms of how well one sees at night. 

Eventually, neighbors go back to FaceBooking  in the evening, doing status updates out the ass—rather than playing Monopoly or Clue around the kitchen table—really seeing the shadows candles cast on the faces of their children—the shades of gray and flickering light—Sally’s chin that’s strong and Bobby’s dimples winking in the nearly dark. 

In Haiti it’s an entirely different affair. 

If we happen to have power when we wake up in the morning and even less likely happen to have it when we fall asleep at night, Sara and I marvel to one another:

“Do you think we REALLY had city power all night?” (What in Haiti we call electricity that comes from something other than a generator)

“Well, was it on when you fell asleep?”

“Yeah, it was.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t just forget to turn the generator off?”

“No, if you didn’t turn it on, I didn’t either.  Had to be city power!”

Craziness—

We marvel at the having rather than the not.

But Sara and I are spoiled.  Though we often face the threat of diesel running low—at least we HAVE a generator.

Most folks in Port-au-Prince, on the other hand, truly DEAL with darkness every night.  Without the ability to generate power, they struggle to help children with their homework—that is, if they can actually afford tuition, if they can actually afford to buy a candle for their kids to study by.

Eyes adjust to lesser light—the dim of half-light becomes a way of life.

But now—

As I prepare to return to friends on our Caribbean island—now that I once again have grown to expect bright light at night—20 good evenings in the US—it’s time to return again to the dimly lit faces of my Haitian neighbors.

To look them fully in the face at night—

And see the contours courage carves.

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A Rant! A Rave! A Prayer?


I miss Sara terribly when we’re apart, but now that it’s been four days since she’s returned to Haiti, I’m experiencing the separation more intensely.  I tend to isolate when Sara’s gone.  I want to be alone.  I want to sleep.  I can barely tie my shoe or utter a coherent sentence—let alone clean the house, cook a meal, or walk the dog.  It’s a sad state of affairs. 

Yes, yes—I know I exaggerate, but I did have one small victory yesterday afternoon, having managed to extricate myself from the green chair I’ve been living in for days and drag myself kicking and screaming to the grocery store.  But then again, hunger’s a pretty strong motivator, and the only thing I want to do more than absolutely nothing is eat—eat everything—eat any and all things unhealthy and heart-attack inducing— I could so Twinkie and Ho-Ho myself to an early grave, it isn’t funny.

It doesn’t help that I’m on a diet. It doesn’t help that the date I return to Haiti has yet to be determined and will depend on security in Port-au-Prince over the next several days.  It doesn’t help that Kentucky, besides being famous for its fried chicken, is in fact one of the most boring places on the planet—no rioting, no cholera, no real election fraud to speak of.  Things are so comfortably tedious and middle class, that even the excitement phobic find themselves twiddling their thumbs and begging to be mugged, praying to be clubbed by a decent natural disaster.  Even a blizzard would do.

Obviously though, I shouldn’t tease about these things.  Obviously I should change this ornery desire to be anywhere I’m not—and never where I am—never in the here and now, in this city, in this state, on this day.

Please help me, God, to be content in the coming year—grateful for today, in this house with warm meals and clean water to drink.  Please teach me to be grateful for the little things and thankful always for the heart-pounding passion that makes me miss Sara when she’s away. Please keep her close.  Please keep her safe.  Please take me to her soon.

How do you handle separation from the ones you love?  Does humor help?  Writing?  Prayer or mediation?

(And thanks for the fabulous feedback and comments on my previous post.  Please share your thoughts and feelings on this one, as well.  My readers rock!)

 84TVN44FY898

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Fear and Trembling in the New Year: a Writer’s Confession


It’s the beginning of a new year and I’m facing the feeling so many writers dread—the fear that I will never compose another decent sentence—the dread that I will not only have nothing to say, but also that what I do write will limp along badly—boring, boring prose that no one with even half a literary brain would lay claim to.

Part of what frustrates me is my seeming lack of focus, the realization as this blog evolves that my interests are too eclectic.  I enjoy a little of this and a lot of that and that and that.  With Sara and I traveling so much, I feel my writing is both literally and stylistically all over the map, sometimes funny, sometimes deadly serious.  Are my own eccentric inclinations exaggerated by the sheer geographical range, if nothing else?

 It might be boring, but I sometimes wish I were one of those people with a singular focus!  Practically speaking, how does one lend cohesion to a blog that’s at one time or another about Haiti, Vietnam, art, poetry, dogs, travel, disaster response, and election fraud?  Then when you expand that list even further by adding topics I’ve yet to address, but plan to (my work in India this past year, for example), it becomes a dizzying mish-mash that would give even the most open-minded reader a case of topical whiplash.

So, my questions this New Year’s Day remain:

–How singularly focused does a blog need to be?

–What makes you keep reading one blog but not another?

–What is your biggest fear as a writer?

–Would you be willing to discuss any of these issues in a post to your blog?

I’d love to know I’m not alone with these writerly fears for the coming year.  How do you manage your own creative insecurities?

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Here’s to Fruits, Funerals, and one Witty Nephew: a Post Revisited


(The piece below was originally posted in July of 2009.  I’m re-posting a new and improved version of the original as part of an ongoing holiday retrospective–not so much for the writing but for the interesting information it provides readers who have never traveled to Southeast Asia.  Hope you enjoy.)

In Vietnam I’ve been enjoying the most amazing  tropical fruits—not just the mango, which I adore and is available in the US—but also others I had never tasted before visiting Southeast Asia.

dragon fruit--not one of my favorites--but visually striking

During my first month in Saigon, I tasted the rambutan—which I’d describe as a fuzzy, strawberry-looking fruit—red leathery skin with soft spines, small oval shape, the size of a large seeded grape.

looks like a fuzzy strawberry

  The fruit inside is white, nearly translucent, sweet and slightly acidic—quite tasty.

a mouthful of deliciousness

Also in the last week, I’ve purchased mangosteen from a woman who operates a fruit stand at the end of our block.  These, I must admit, are the most amazingly succulent fruit I have ever tasted.  With a deep purple peel and large leathery leaves on top, the white pulp separates like segments of an orange and nearly dissolves into a nectar-like liquid in the mouth, undoubtedly divine.

tough outer skin of mangosteen

flower-looking shape on underside of mangosteen

inside of mangosteen

So, Sara, who should be pleased by my consumption of something other than bread, has been in Hanoi for more than a week, leaving  Lucy and I l alone in Saigon to deal with my neighbor’s funeral music. 

It all began in the early evening on Friday with what I thought was a band, one I assumed must have been playing at the micro-brewery beside my apartment.  Mind you, I had never before heard music from this establishment or been bothered by any noise from the place that remains open long after I go to bed.  But when the music began again the following morning around 7, I realized it could not be coming from my suspected source. 

Later that morning when I was finally able to communicate my question through a primitive form of sign language I use with my non-English speaking cleaning lady, the explanation came in two words, “Dead man.” 

But———–when the music continued incessantly on Sunday and resumed Monday morning  just after four—well before sunrise, I thought, “Dead man, indeed.”  I felt badly for my grieving neighbors—but good-god—I was becoming increasingly irritated by the clamor and close to homicidal in my mission to make it stop. 

Fortunately, however, as my nephew Johnny rightly pointed out, Monday indeed became “the day the music died.”

Johnny, my witty nephew!