by Tim Leffel
Am I really that bad of a photographer? Every shot of a building looks crooked. It’s like I got drunk in a cantina and then went on a photography spree around Mexico City, unable to keep the viewfinder straight as I clicked off shots of the sites. A slanted church, a leaning office [...]
by James Michael Dorsey
Grand Bahama, while grand, is a tiny speck of Bahamian Island soaked in rum and populated by those searching for a lifestyle that does not require their presence.
Soon after arriving, I was smitten with the large and beautiful shells known as Conches. These are the shells you always see bare breasted natives [...]
by Erin Byrne
There is something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
The good man possesses a kingdom. - Seneca, Thyestes.380.
If books are humanity in print, he’s the king of the world.
The old man sits holding his worn paperback. His gnarled fingers, veins raised under [...]
by Kathleen Spivack
“In this hotel,” the plaque reads, “Modigliani lived and worked. Here the Spanish painter Picasso created his masterpieces. Painters Pisarro and Degas derived inspiration. The famous Kikki of Montparnasse held court and modeled for the famous artists of her day. Man Ray and Henry Miller came from afar and did their best artistic [...]
by Jennifer Arin
Que cara! What nerve! I mutter, exiting the cab with two heavy bags. It’s almost midnight, and I’m exhausted from the long journey: eleven hours from San Francisco to Madrid, followed by a six-hour wait at the Madrid airport, as the staff of Iberia Air practiced civil disobedience: a strike that left the [...]
by Megan Lyles
We almost didn’t sail on the Starlight Serenade in the first place. We’d e-mailed the captain after we saw the information tacked up on a Panama City hostel notice board, “Sail to Colombia,” exactly what we were looking for. But when Michael asked him a few questions, common safety questions brought up by [...]
by Kaitlyn Gentile
The boat had no bathroom, and that was worrisome. “Anything you have to do, you do in the water,” said Charlie. Charlie was our captain, a skinny islander with a Caribbean accent. Jake, his dreadlocked first mate, nodded along. “Anything.” On such an unflinchingly sunny morning after such an intense amount of alcohol, [...]
by Megan Lyles
It was 4:20 a.m. when I heard the faint hum in the distance. The noise grew steadily from a barely perceptible hope to a shrieking racket, and then slowed to individual thunk-thunk-thunks as the train pulled into the station. When it had stopped completely, I unfolded myself from atop my backpack and stood. [...]
by Margaret Ford Rogers
Matt insisted. “They’re Cuban and know the roads.”
Hmmm. This might have been true, but naïve Matt didn’t really understand what he was saying in giving the OK for Jordan and Fermin to drive. Regardless, I should have been against it. Mickie and I had two strict rules for driving in Cuba. Never [...]
by John Edwards
Into the Wild Wild East of “Europe Minor”
After the collapse of communism in the USSR, inflation in the freshly minted Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia rolled up the ruble into the cheapest toilet paper around, so I decided to go East and stock up. I needed a cheap place to wipe [...]
