I was in Minnesota for only a moment – I’d been invited to speak at the Rain Taxi book festival on a panel with some delightful people, and despite the brevity of the trip, I still found myself with an afternoon free to roam the city. I asked the internet how I should spend my…
Rand’s work had brought us to New Mexico for the very first time, and in a few weeks, we’d be in Japan. The timing was unintentional but it felt like my path was already set. If I was going to walk through Hiroshima, now long rebuilt, I couldn’t do so without considering the consequences of…
I broke my long-held rule about not taking photos of artwork while at The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. I don’t know if my views on the matter have changed or not. Perhaps they’ve shifted only slightly. I still get angry at people using flashes to light up ancient works, I still want to scream at the…
Islamophobia has, understandably, been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve been watching as it slowly spreads across America – perhaps it’s always been around, just under the surface, but in recent months, with the election of our new President, it’s come to a rolling boil. He has villified Americans and foreigners alike, accused the…
If there is anything positive to be gleaned from losing someone you care about, it’s this: for a brief window of time, you remember to appreciate the people you have left. It’s sort of like when you’re eating a massive bag of popcorn (for those you who have read my blog for years, patiently…
I know that a good story requires build-up before a big reveal, but I’ve never had the patience for that. While everyone else is sitting through the rising action, I’m screaming “GET TO THE CLIMAX,” which doesn’t always fly in the middle of a movie theater or wedding ceremony or bris. And so, breaking all…
If you were unable to guess from yesterday’s post, I’m oddly passionate about sculpture. This is surprising, even to me. If you asked me directly, I’d tell you: God, no, sculpture, ceramics, pottery, all of that is so boring. And yet I find myself buying weird vases and tiny ceramic figurines everywhere I go, and our house…
Do you remember when I told you about Las Fallas? The festival in Valencia where giant sculptures of plaster and wood are meticulously constructed over the course of a year, then rapidly burned down on one Bacchanalian night while crowds of drunken onlookers cheer? Pyromania isn’t really my thing (I’m more self-destructive than outwardly…
I’ve tried to write about La Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias (The City of Arts and Sciences) before. It’s a rather remarkable collection of buildings (an aquarium, a science center, conference halls) in the center of Valencia, Spain, architecturally fascinating and utterly unlike anything I’ve seen in my travels. I wanted very much to…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
Available Now!
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