by Eileen | Dec 23, 2014 | 39, bicycle, food, memoir
Just before I receive my big, last-night Chanukah present, my family gathers in the front room of our Brooklyn house, where the wind leaks through the front window panes and blows the flames on the menorah candles to the side, rushing them through burning, as if we...
by Eileen | Aug 28, 2014 | memoir, travel writing, Uncategorized
What jogs memories free? Like money in the pocket of a jacket you’ve checked a hundred times for change, and found nothing, until one day, there it is, small, yet important. Today I misplaced a pen I’d been using, and reached into my bag to get another,...
by Eileen | Apr 9, 2014 | chile, memoir, train, travel, Uncategorized
Every now and then, EFE (the train authority/company/people in Chile) run these tourist trains along old tracks that used to, but no longer carry passenger trains. EFE drags old cars from somewhere, plump up the seats, put velcro on the curtains (really, my 1920s...
by Eileen | Jan 29, 2014 | memoir
The time has come to come clean. For the last several years, on scraps of paper, and little journals, and USB keys that have traveled hither and yon, where yon is Suriname and Costa Rica (twice), and Nicaragua, Seattle, San Francisco, and Argentina (several times) and...
by Eileen | Jun 26, 2013 | chile, food, food and drink, memoir, santiago
If you spend any time at all in Santiago, chances are that you will spend some time downtown. I think of this as the more “traditional” part of Santiago, where traces of the past are more than that. Many of them have not yet been erased or paved over,...
by Eileen | Feb 12, 2013 | memoir, meta, travel
What you think at 20 isn’t the same as what you think at 40, or at 60. This is what one of the many seniors or near-seniors said to me as we were leaving the hotel in Panama City, after spending five days together on an all-canal-all-the-time tour. And...
