meaning making
In Panamá, “pushbuttons” are motels that rent rooms by the hour. You pull into an open single-car garage, press a button to close the door (and conceal your vehicle), and enter the connecting room. All transactions (eg., room charge, drink orders) occur through privacy-ensured sliding openings so the staff can’t see you. Rooms look similar… Continue reading Happy Valentine’s Hour
Taboga is a small island on the Pacific side of Panamá. It’s a forty-five minute ferry ride from the Amador Causeway, in Panamá City. I hadn’t been to the island since I was a kid growing on the Isthmus. But it came to mind as I planned my first trip in two years to check… Continue reading Dispatches from Taboga
How to receive a random act of kindness.
In my first memory of being vaccinated, I wasn’t quite 6 years old. Early 1970s. The nurse, a tall man dressed completely in white except for shiny black shoes, set a stainless steel tray of paraphernalia on a table beside me. He sat on a stool which he rolled up to me and injected one… Continue reading My First Vaccination
Life as a storytelling activity.
Warning: this story isn’t for the squeamish. My sister lived with me for a few years in Tallahassee while she studied at Florida State University. We shared a two-bedroom, one bath apartment on the ground floor of a fourplex in a leafy neighborhood close to downtown. One night, I roused from bed by a commotion… Continue reading Sibling Story, not for the Squeamish
Ready for a trip down my memory lane? This picture posted on FaceBook reminds me of my first job. It was a summer student assistant job while I was at Balboa High School, in the former Canal Zone of the Republic of Panamá. This was 1983 or 84. I was 16 or 17. The rest… Continue reading Remembering Ancon Hill
In college, I once drank a cup of magic mushroom tea. It was at a party, before going out to Club Park Avenue with my roommates. This was over thirty years ago, in Tallahassee. And it continues to be the most vivid and fun memory of the times I spent at CPA. My re-introduction to… Continue reading Dispatches from Mushroom Space: My Psilocybin Retreat
His name is Hidalgo. I traveled with him from the heart of Texas to the Pyrenees mountain village of Roncesvalles for a 500-mile trip through northern Spain to the holy city of Santiago de Compostela in the emerald region of Galicia. Along the way, I trekked to the core of my being. Hidalgo accompanied me… Continue reading All About My Mountain Bike
Almost fifty years ago, on a hot summer night in June 1969, the patrons of a mafia-run bar in NYC's Greenwich Village found themselves subject to yet another police raid and the humiliating rough treatment that came along with it. However, on this night the patrons fought back. The combatants lived in the margin of… Continue reading In Pictures: Stonewall 25 and Gay Games IV