Last week I went around the corner to buy baby wipes and saw Jesus Christ coming down the street. I didn’t get the baby wipes—you can’t buy those on the street corner pharmacies or in the corner stores, which are called pulperias here in Granada, Nicaragua. You have to go to the big American-style supermarket…
holidays
From Pumpkin Spice Latte to Pitaya Juice: An Autumnal Journey
As a folklorist, I often feel that marketing messes with holidays. I don’t want to think about Halloween the day after the fourth of July, but the drugstore and the “seasonal” aisle of the supermarket and the forests worth of catalogs that arrive at my door want me to, because there’s really no big ticket…
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Amalía Has Two Easters
A few weeks ago my mother, Joanie, called me up all atwitter, as she often does after reading not one but two newspapers first thing in the morning. (Bless her heart, she is singlehandedly keeping the physical, print version of the newspaper alive.) “Guess what!” she chirped. “The newspaper says that according to the census,…
Spiritual Spring Break
It’s that time of year again–empty beer bottles are sprouting in my garden like so many crocuses, flocks of young chicks in bikini tops and belly rings keep swooping into my neighborhood Starbucks, and, if the boys who have rented the apartment across the courtyard are any indication, young men’s fancy is turning to lust….
Folklore Overload!
Reader, forgive me, for I have sinned. It’s been 20 days since my last post–the longest I’ve ever gone without posting since the inception of this blog. My head has been spinning with event both glorious (much celebration surrounding the launch of my novel, Other Waters) and less so (my outpatient surgery became inpatient surgery…
Luck Be A Lentil, Tonight
My husband and I were already asleep by midnight this New Year’s Eve. I like to think that’s not because we’re insanely boring but because our baby has been teething, so when she sleeps, we sleep. We did go to dinner, though, beforehand, at an Italian restaurant where the outdoor seating means teething babies are…