After staying in Nairobi 24 hours on no sleep, I took a flight to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania to attend a conference entitled Africa-Asia: ‘A New Axis of Knowledge 2.’ The object was to learn about the region and run into contacts who might help me locate Chinese enclaves and business folks making interesting money… Read More
Dawn: Mwingi Rd., Kileleshwa, Nairobi. My Lufthansa flight -an Airbus A340-300 — touched down last night at 8:11 pm local time. It has taken me an entire summer to prepare for this day. I haven’t slept much. The cock is crowing. There was a slow-mo feel to the entire season of renting, interviewing, writing magazine… Read More
My Mom’s best friend, my surrogate mother growing up, was an opera singer named Maria Callas. No, not that Maria Callas, the tempestuous vocal genius and companion to Aristotle Onassis. This Maria Callas was altogether different — warm, gifted, fragile, yet steely strong. She passed into another life September 8 2017, and her daughter, Michele Morin, sent… Read More
[Read full story in Smithsonian.com] His reconstructed faces have tongues that taste and eyelids that blink. But will they withstand the test of time? [Dec. 9, 2016] There have been 38 facial transplants worldwide to date. Not all have survived. (Elnur / iStock) By Arielle Emmett SMITHSONIAN.COM DECEMBER 9, 2016 On September 5, 2001,… Read More
Harbin, Manchuria: Officials here seem reluctant to spotlight the Japanese germ warfare scientists and what they did to thousands of local inhabitants here in 1932 and beyond. Perhaps that’s the reason Harbin has built China’s greatest contemporary war museum, known formally as “The Museum of Evidence of War Crimes by Japanese Army Unit 731,” in… Read More
I realize I never finished the story of Harbin, which I visited nearly a year ago. It began with my need to research this icy Russian-Jewish-Chinese enclave in Manchuria, home of the international ice festival, seat of the frigid Songhua River, intending to flesh out the frigid landscape for the novel I’m working on (interminably)… Read More
Just two blocks from my Charleston-style home on Bridges Farm Rd., I plunge almost every day into Lake Davidson, the horseshoe-shaped lake with the gooey clay bottom. On sunny days, when the water turns a pellucid blue-green, I swim as freely as the sparrows and Great Blue Herons swooping down from the trees. Immersed in… Read More
You think about the pit mix who was young once along with your children. They were all of a piece. The dog with the pointy ears and pink and black snout. The child with the pointy ears and the sudden way she darted across the room followed by the puppy. Now the puppy has rheumatism.… Read More
Charlotte, September 22, 2016. More murder, more anger, more confrontation between police in riot gear and protesters in the Queen City, the place my daughter and I call home. This is the city my neighbors have cherished for its easygoing manners, its kindness and conviviality. Now we have the death of another black man, 43-year-old Keith… Read More
January 11, 2016. As I stepped off the train at Harbin West station after an eight hour train ride across the Manchurian flatlands from Beijing, the station was moist and frigid with the Siberian wind and the night which had fallen hours before. It was -29 degrees Celsius as I dragged my two suitcases and… Read More