We’ve learned new ways to escape being noticed this year, novel ways to disengage. We disappeared through technology, muting our voices and hiding our faces. What will we do when we are face to face again? In the fall of 2020, I taught a graduate course as an adjunct at…

My relationship with Christmas trees began when I was a child. In my upstate New York suburb in the 1960s, mine was one of very few Jewish families. Despite my mother’s annual protests to Mr Hermann, the elementary school principal, and, occasionally, the Bethlehem School Board, every year, I dutifully…

“Growing dread and acceptance of the winter ahead is weighing on Americans’ physical and mental health and raising fears about debt and job security, according to the latest installment of the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index.” A little girl with red rubber boots is walking with her mother, auburn hair and a…

I am sitting in a nail salon in Oaxaca. Carmen, the young manicurist sporting a black t-shirt with a white skull and the words “NEW YORK NEW YORK”, smiles at me hopefully. This, I think, is the test of my Spanish learning so far: nail salon chit-chat. I’m not that…

Shortly before I left Philadelphia for good, I found myself in a crowded noisy courtroom in City Hall. On one side, the Painted Bride, a venerable art center, and its community of supporters (including me), seeking approval to sell its building, a performance space festooned with an exuberant mosaic by…

Albania evokes images of ancient blood feuds and Communist isolation, of which remnants of both remain. In the Accursed Mountains, settlements linger with one foot in another century. …

Many visitors go to a new place yearning to sample the food. Tasting street tacos in Mexico City, poutine in Quebec City, or jambalaya in Louisiana means that you experienced something quintessential about a place. Learning the samba, or tango, or salsa is like that. It’s feeling the flavor of…

The evening air of Santa Marta hung warm and thick. Three chivas, traditional farm transport turned Colombian party bus, were waiting in the parking lot. With their garish paint jobs and purple strobe lights, they looked more traveling carny than mobile disco. …

Barcelona is the perfect city to visit with an octogenarian. Old people walk slowly. In 2012, I was visiting Barcelona with my then 84-year old father. Whenever I thought I was walking at a slow pace, I needed to divide the pace in half so as to not leave Dad…