You’ve really gone off the beaten path when the GPS in your rental car shows you are literally off the map. You’re out here castle hopping your way north from Andalusia just as the Moors did a thousand years ago. A beautiful mountain range rises out of a carpet of vineyards. Set in the Sierra…
Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs. It’s hard to tell which Americanisms will get adopted in foreign lands and I suppose it’s even more difficult to predict just how these foreign…
Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs. My father-in-law, a wise and decent man from a small village in the northwestern corner of Extremadura called San Martin de Trevejo, tells a tale…
Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs. One of my first memories of Spain is how time felt completely different here than it did anywhere else I had ever been. During my…
Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs. I remember watching with amazement, and not just a little discomfort, as the young men in pointy shoes leapt through the air over the huge…
Time ago I took a walk through the many castle ruins that scatter the hilltops of Extremadura, Spain. Where the pictures the paper chose to accompany the piece came from? Well…mine are of Caceres and the bull. I can’t say I know who the other people are? Click over to the piece in the Khaleej…
Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs. For some, the holidays are a welcome time of routine. Of doing what you’ve always done and feeling a sense of security in knowing that…
Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs. I suppose that they had been slithering along the margins of my subconscious for some time but were recently brought into focus by a picture…
Don’t try this at home kids! It’s fall…the leaves are beginning to fall and the mushroom hounds are on the loose. The word ‘mushroom’ in English seems to convey about as much excitement and meaning as the word ‘oil’. You have to compound it to extract its full flavour. Jumping over stone walls and getting…
Came across a repost of something that I wrote for Trazzler on the website, Salon. It was a series of 10 travel bits on places in Spain that Ibn Battutah visited on his trip through Andalusia back in the 14th century. Nice surprise. See it here.