The contrasts between old and new, practical and superflous, modern and old-fashioned never ceases to amaze me. Maybe that's why I find in Chile an utterly endless supply of blog (and other writing) fodder. Today's lesson is about regulation, rules and the following...

Every year, on the fourth Thursday of November, like many other families in that somewhat misshapen landmass of a country we call the United States, my family gets together for Thanksgiving. For the first three years I was in Chile I dealt with my weather sickness...

Everyone in Chile is crazy about the alerce (a-LEHR-say). The alerce is Chile's redwood, its giant sequoia. A huge hardwood tree that was overharvested almost to extinction. It grows gigantically tall and hugely round and for a thousand years. It fills an important...

The other day on paseo Huerfanos, a (mostly) pedestrian walkway that stretches from San Martín (of the water-scooping-from-the-fountain fame) up to Cerro Santa Lucia towards the east, I saw a crowd huddled around something, so I had to go investigate.Huerfanos is the...

The other night I was sitting outside one of my local cafés, one that used to have slices of cake and such for a little over a dollar, but the prices of which have recently gone up to the scandalous price of nearly $1.50 (900 pesos!), enjoying the cool evening breeze...

Yesterday was International Women's Day, here there and everywhere. If you're like me, and live in the United States, you have only recently become aware of this celebratory event. I have a vague recollection of hearing about it in 1996ish, when the Dalai Lama went to...

Chile in general is pretty straighforward. You're not going to arrive and notice that everything is exactly upside down and opposite from how your expected. This, in fact, leads to something I like to call cultural seasickness. Everything is just a few degrees off of...

Every city has its own walking rhythm, it’s own choreographed set of steps that let you get from point A to point B without obstructing traffic, or getting mashed by your fellow pedestrians.In Copenhagen, as a friend and I strolled down the Strøget, or pedestrian...

"More news from Santiago" they clamor. Less navel gazing! More nuts-and-bolts. This is what I like to pretend is happening, and I run the show here, so here goes.The other day I went to take out the trash, to the tiny room in the hallway where we all deposit our...

I've been asked not a few times how I find myself in Latin America, how I find myself in Chile, how it all started, this interest in a part of the world to which I have no real claim other than that I've adopted it.I was twenty-one years old, with multiple bottles of...