It’s Derby Day today and that means hats! ©Linda Watanabe McFerrin Hats matter, always for some of us, and today and tomorrow—along with mint juleps, thoroughbred horses and other grand Southern traditions—at this year’s Kentucky Derby. Having just returned from South Carolina and the Southern Sampler Artists Colony where we were celebrating and memorializing Charleston…
Palm Desert, California: December 22, 2012 ©Linda Watanabe McFerrin Spectacular and panoramic morning at 6:30 a.m. on the balcony of my villa at Palm Desert’s Desert Springs Marriott and here I was getting set to rhapsodize about the snow-dusted San Jacinto Mountains in the distance, the towering palms, the Mary-and-Joseph-gee-whiz-I-can’t-believe-it’s-almost-Christmas baby-blue sky with its little…
Recipe for a Balinese Feast ©Linda Watanabe McFerrin We gathered the writers in advance of our departure to Indonesia at the James Presho House for a Balinese dinner; the menu: spring roll appetizers; gado-gado; nasi goreng; a meaty, kebab-like version of chicken satay; and ice cream with crystallized ginger. Nice try. Here, in Ubud with…
Discovering Indonesia ©Linda Watanabe McFerrin So, here I am in Indonesia—Java and Bali—where novelist (That Paris Year) Joanna Biggar and I are leading a travel writing workshop in the hills above Ubud. We’ve covered some interesting ground, literarily speaking, but the nut that we seem to be coming back to again and again—yes, yes, we…
Safe Passage ©Linda Watanabe McFerrin On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, my writing group was scheduled to give a reading from an anthology of travel tales at Get Lost Books* in San Francisco. Here is the message that I sent to the group about that night’s scheduled meeting: In the wake of this a.m.’s terrible news,…
