The Sweet Life ©Linda Watanabe McFerrin Do I need to read Connie Bennett’s new book, Beyond Sugar Shock? You bet, I do … I once ate an entire box of brown sugar … with a teaspoon … in under thirty minutes. No, it wasn’t a contest. I had a hankering for something sweet, and back…
Remembering a day off the coast of southern Ireland … ©Linda Watanabe McFerrin Gale force winds, rain, twenty-six-foot seas—we’d hit a bit of a rough spot in the weather on the Irish Riviera, the promoters’ somewhat euphemistic appellation for the strip of resort towns—Youghal, Ardmore, Dungarvan, Cobh and Ballycotton—that dot Ireland’s southern coast and draw…
Time Traveling through the Perseid Shower ©Linda Watanabe McFerrin “Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise again in light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” –Sarah Williams It’s August; the Perseid Shower is just about due, and I am time traveling again. Ever since humans…
Embracing Fat Tuesday ©Linda Watanabe McFerrin NEW ORLEANS — PINOCCHIO zooms by on roller skates, thin, hairy legs protruding from green lederhosen. Three Elvises swivel past, hips rotating like long-playing records. A besequined, masked stranger raises his wine glass and blows me a kiss. Scandalous. Ridiculous. Crazy. Taboo. It’s Fat Tuesday – Mardi Gras, the…
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…
I am lost, swimming in the soft light of the bison’s umber eye, where I feel myself reflected. Above me the sky arcs, an incredible big top of robin’s-egg-blue that dips down to meet the vast carpet of tawny grasses on a distant horizon. I do not think it is especially wise to be staring…
I could blame it on Luigi, the bald Italian sculptor. “Don’t eat so many prawns,” he warned with an ominous, dark-eyed glare as I tucked into the fist-sized pink curls that lay, glistening in butter and garlic, on the serving platter before me. The month was August; we were celebrating a friend’s birthday at one…
