I have continued on my search to find a map of Florida, although now that I have several, I’m even more lost than with any GPS system. Not to ignore the early Paleo-Indian inhabitants of the peninsula, we know that Florida’s written history begins with the arrival of the Europeans. The Spaniard Juan Ponce de […]
Florida Without a Map
I have always loved maps; geography was one of my favorite subjects as a little girl growing up in Madrid. Perhaps I already knew that I would travel often and far. On maps one can mark the places visited or the ones planning to go. But I was in Florida without a map for an […]
Io Capitano: Redux
Manohla Dargis, a New York Times film critic, describes Io Capitano (Italy, 2023, directed by Matteo Garrone) as “A Migration Odyssey,” but it is so much more than that. It is a bildungsroman or a coming-of-age story; a depiction of the Noble Savage or the glorification of native peoples living in communion with nature; it […]
Sadie Hawkins Day
During my training into American traditions, I learned that when February had an extra day it was not only a leap year but it was also Sadie Hawkins Day. Sadie Hawkins was not an actual person; she first appeared in the comic strip Li’l Abner by Al Capp in 1937 in the fictional hillbilly village […]
Ferdinand Forever
I saw on the front page of this past Sunday’s The New York Times that, after months of controversy, Mexico City opened its bullring, the largest in the world, for a bullfight. It surprised me to see so much coverage to this issue, with all the world conflicts taking place. I thought about bullfighting in […]
American Non-Fiction
Let me start by saying that my favorite film this year is American Fiction, directed and written by Cord Jefferson with a smart, funny screenplay. Jeffrey Wright plays a “normal” Black man: a college professor and author who has to deal with love issues, irascible academics, prickly siblings, a sick mother who needs help in […]