I’ve started writing for Southern Exposure, an interesting group Weblog covering Latin American affairs. Here’s my first dispatch, which surveys the news from Ecuador this week.
Southern Exposure’s contributors include Marcelo Rinesi, Stephen George, Francisco Muniz, Edward Hugh, Miguel Octavio, Randy Paul, Miguel Centellas, and Henry Schroy.
I went to see an Ecuadorian production of “The Vagina Monologues” last night. (En Espanol, that’s “Los Monologos de la Vagina”.)
It was funny. It was ribald. It was candid. And the four actresses spoke very quickly and employed lots of slang. I didn’t understand some of it. (Okay, make that lots of it.) But […]
My good friend Jack W. works for an environmental regulatory consulting firm in DC (no, I don’t have any idea what he does all day, but it sounds pretty fancy). And he’s a very astute political observer.
I asked him–as a “progressive Republican” (and a Vermonster, just like Howard Dean)–to comment on the Democratic Presidential […]
Planning on doing some hiking in Costa Rica? Beware of strange bug bites. (Via Beautiful Horizons.)
First typhoid hits Cuenca. And now a bold armed robbery of a well-established restaurant.
Two nights ago, several men brandishing shotguns entered El Cafecito, a restaurant/bar/hostal popular with gringos and travelers. (I ate dinner there last week.) The men, surely aware that the place would be full of tourists, robbed everyone there, pistol-whipped an employee, and […]
I’ve just finished grading my midterm exams. The tests, which I gave to my 103 and 302 classes, contained several writing sections. Following are some amusing responses I received; I’m reproducing them here verbatim.
Asked to look at a photo and describe the facial features of the Spanish pop singer David Bisbal, a 302 student writes:
“David […]
CNN reports: “After complaints from parents and students, police in Goose Creek, South Carolina, defended their decision Friday to send a team of officers, some with guns drawn, into a high school earlier this week for a drug raid that turned up no drugs.”
There are times when I’m proud of the way things are […]
The Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer argues that Bolivian Indigenous leader Evo Morales’s anti-Western rhetoric is wrong-headed–for, Oppenheimer askes, “What would Latin America be without Western influence?”
The Bush Administration is worried that Morales, who placed second in Bolivia’s last presidental elections and spearheaded the movement to topple the Andean nation’s last head of state, is […]
Ban the Ban is a grassroots organization that opposes a potential smoking ban in all Washington, DC bars and restaurants.
I’m linking to their site (via Human Liberty) because I support their mission.
I don’t smoke, and I don’t advocate smoking. But I believe in smokers’ rights. The anti-smoking movement in the United States is, […]
Emory Magazine has just published an essay I wrote about living in Ecuador during the war in Iraq. Here’s an excerpt:
I arrived in Ecuador while the US government was preparing to invade Iraq, and I’ve been here throughout the subsequent war and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Witnessing these events from a foreign country has […]
Randy Paul points out a promising new group Weblog focused on Latin America. It’s called Southern Exposure.
Funny stuff. Check out Brendan Huhn on NPR and the mating ritual (scroll down to “It’s All I Listen to in the Car”). (By way of Brian M.):
For both the male and the female, listening to NPR sends a signal to a prospective mate: “Despite my current income, in a few years I will have […]
A quick note: we’re back in Cuenca; we had an excellent sojourn in the Amazon jungle.
We left Thursday on an overnight bus and arrived in Banos, a city six hours north of here, Friday morning. From there we booked a three-day tour at a location a couple hours outside Puyo, on the edge of the […]