The Force of Fashion – It’s the Shoes

I love shoes. More than Carrie Bradshaw. More than Imelda Marcos. More than is within reason. Not that I have even close to the 2,700 pairs that Imelda had carefully tucked away in her palace, my collection is much smaller, numbering less than two percent of hers. It’s not the quantity. It’s the look, the shape, the color, and the adornments. It’s how they make me feel, no matter what I’m wearing or what crisis I’m facing, when I slip them on and walk down the street, sit in a restaurant, or even, huddle over my computer as I do all day.

Spain Again: Ham and Wine – Las Bodegas

I first visited Spain more than thirty years ago. I was young and just married; it was my first trip abroad. In Barcelona, we stayed with the family of our friend, Juan Manuel, whom we had met in school. His father owned a ham business. Having known only boiled ham I found the ham served at meals to be quite another beast. I enjoyed it and didn’t mind that the entrada always incorporated it in some way. Then one day, his father suggested that we visit the bodega where he cured his jamon serrano. “Sure,” we thought. “Why not?”

Spain Eye Openers: New Airport Terminal, Fast Trains, Hospital Emergency, and Wind Power: Part IV

This is the last of four pieces on Spain whose themes are not common in travelogues. I have chosen these because, each one, in some way, has informed or illuminated some issue or experience of my own life. The subject of this episode came to me as we traveled from Madrid to Andalusia on the the AVE. As we flew across Castilla de la Mancha, I looked out on the neat rows of giants, hugging the ridges of the rolling hills, their long spindly arms going round and round, and thought of Don Quijote and how he had also gazed upon them so long ago. Now tall and svelte these giants bear little resemblance to the squat bulk of their forebears, but their riches are still intact.

Spain Eye Openers: New Airport Terminal, Fast Trains, Hospital Emergency, and Wind Power, Part III

This is the third of four installments on Spain which I recently visited with my husband and two other friends. You never know when you are going to need health care. In this episode, an unlucky event turned into a fortuitous experience, Spanish style. An accident required a trip to the emergency room. That visit pleasantly surprised me and made me envious of Spanish health care. As we work to solve our very deep health care crisis here in this country, it helps to look at how others, in other places, do it, even if that happens after a fall.

Spain Eye Openers: New Airport Terminal, Fast Trains, Hospital Emergency, and Wind Power: Part II

This is the second of four installments on Spain which I recently visited with my husband and two other friends. In this post I remember my first experience with train travel more than thirty years ago and share the best way to travel in the 21st century. “Oh that more Americans might know what it is to fly pleasantly like a bird right here on the surface of the earth.”

Spain Eye Openers: New Airport Terminal, Fast Trains, Hospital Emergency, and Wind Power: Part I

This is the first of four installments on Spain which I recently visited with my husband and two other friends. I am struck by how much it has changed since I first visited in June of 1975, just months before the death of Franco. Today, it is a modern, vibrant country, and like many nations, it struggles with the effects of the economic crisis. Yet, it refuses to stand still. Even though Spain’s unemployment rate had reached more than 17% by the second quarter of this year there is serious investment, rapid development, a reverence for excellence, a preference for lively discussion, an acceptance of the idiosyncratic, and an elegance of living that I find most appealing.

Street Fashion in Spain: Barcelona, Madrid, and the Andalucian cities of Cordoba, Granada, and Sevilla

Spanish women like to look good. You can tell from the care they take in dressing; they think it out, project attitude, and have fun. They dress for themselves and according to the image they want to project. Walking down the street they exude vitality and engagement with the world. Their style is there no matter what. When my friend fell and twisted her ankle making a visit to the hospital emergency room necessary, I found Spanish style peeping out from beneath scrubs and lab coats: Beautiful skin, polished hands, and sleek wavy hair. Everything in its place and pressed. The doctor who attended us wore a beige pencil skirt under her white coat and a thick gold watch on her wrist; she looked great while competently probing my friend’s swollen ankle.

Safe House in New Orleans

We drive slowly. Lining both sides of the street are homes coming undone at the seams and parked cars, many just rusting hulks, wrecked and stripped. Women sitting on porches eye the neighborhood’s activities and note our passing. Kids walk aimlessly down the street. It is a hot and humid Saturday afternoon.

A Pig in the Front Seat and Other Stories from New Orleans

Recently, I visited New Orleans with my friend Diana who had been urging me to make the trip for a while. She was eager to introduce me to some of the work and people there. This city hits you smack in the face.  It is a city of tragedy and crisis, of resiliency and redemption. It is a city of music where just about everyone can beat a rhythm or create a song. It is a city of down-and-outers and those who make miracles. Not for those who like tidiness, it is a messy city of splintered wood and unkept promises, of dreams and good works.

What’s Going on Here, Anyway?

I have just returned from a cross country jaunt to western Massachusetts for a weekend of wonder with my friend Erica. We saw nature bursting from its winter hibernation at the insistence of an early heat wave, gangs of students, from the many colleges that populate the landscape, shaking off their winter blahs, dancers performing spring rites, and art everywhere. It was also a weekend of thought. Here’s why.