My blog has migrated to a new host and is being painstakingly reconstructed here. Please bear with me as I iron out wrinkles, hammer out the dents, and apply enough spit and duct tape to hold it all together.— Karen
It’s not easy for anyone, let alone a foreigner, to cause a sensation at Seville’s Feria de Abril (April Fair). The whole event is already wildly over the top, with half a million women dressed in gaudy, ruffled gowns, beribboned horses and carriages weaving through the crowd, and everyone dancing day and night all…
“Nothing is permanent in this wicked world — not even our troubles.” — Charlie Chaplin “I always feel younger here in Seville,” Rich said at breakfast Friday morning. My husband looked remarkably chipper for a man who had been out till all hours watching live cabaret in an old warehouse on one of the city’s…
“What surprises people most when they first move here?” I asked my friend Gabrielle — Gaye, for short — as we lingered over late-morning coffee in one of Seville’s back street cafés this week. Having moved from the US to Spain in 1963, marrying a Sevillano, and raising a family here, Gaye has been my…
The first thing that struck me when I arrived back in Spain this week was how much less invisible I feel here. People pay attention to each other. It’s one of the things that makes Seville — a city of 700,000 souls — seem like a village. For instance, there was the time I discovered…
“The horrible thing,” Rich said, after finishing Charlotte’s Web , “is that I’m never going to be able to kill a spider again.” When I’d learned Rich had somehow managed to get through childhood without meeting the talking spider who saved an innocent pig, I gave him my copy, pulling it out of the huge…
You have to love a city that commemorates the removal of a hated eyesore with poetic words celebrating our collective joy. Walking out of the San Francisco Ferry Building this week, I discovered a sidewalk plaque commemorating the destruction — begun by the 1989 earthquake, finished by the mayor — of the hideous 1958 Embarcadero…
Did you do anything loony during the pandemic lockdown? Of course you did, but don’t worry, I’m not asking you to reveal details. (Unless you really want to — in which case, I’m all ears.) Europeans under strict lockdown, allowed outside only to fetch groceries and walk pets, took to strolling around with their cats,…
Remember the $150,000 banana duct-taped to the wall ? Roguish Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan caused a sensation showing it at a swanky Miami art exhibition in 2019. Performance artist David Datuna caused another sensation by pulling the banana off the wall and eating it . Everyone else had an uproarious time coming up with memes…
I never learn. Really, I ought to have my head examined. “We should go out to Angel Island,” Rich has been saying all summer. “Take a picnic.” I was tempted. I’d never been there before, and Rich had fond memories of a visit 50 years earlier; cue the montage of soaring trees and spectacular views of…
Running across this wonderful meme yesterday, I paused to think about the women in my family. My great-grandmother Mary Langley crossed the continent by covered wagon, arriving on the West Coast around 1889. Her daughter Ramona would spend her youth as a silent film star and her later years as my outrageous grandmother. My mom…
CELEBRATING GOOD NEIGHBORS These days I’m writing about Good Neighbors, exploring how the people around me are working to help each other get through these challenging times. My weekly posts appear on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on my travel and research schedule.
THIS BLOG IS A PROMOTION-FREE ZONE. As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things I find interesting and/or useful.
