We all have favorite local businesses. I believe the best are those where we almost forget that buying and selling have anything to do with it, where we exchange something meaningful and the money that changes hands merely supports that exchange. Sometimes I describe...
Please welcome author Susan Blumberg-Kason as she joins me on the blog book tour for her new memoir, Good Chinese Wife (Sourcebooks, July 29, 2014), which is already receiving rave reviews. Susan grew up in Chicago dreaming of the neon signs and double-decker buses of...
I teach dance in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and one of my Khmer friends from work asked me to present a contemporary dance duet at her wedding. Leak was having two weddings: one for her family in Battambang and one in Phnom Penh. I asked one of my dance students, Dara, to...
To me, life is one (hopefully) long journey, full of dirt roads, blind alleys, and exhilarating straightaways. Some people pick a target and spend their days marching inexorably towards it, while others zig and zag, trying to see as much as possible. It’s doubtful...
When I was 36, I spent a month in Spain, and I never regretted that I missed running with the bulls in Pamplona. But today I heard the below interview with travel blogger Jeannie Mark, known as the Nomadic Chick, and began to wonder if I've spent my life being too...
I love old-fashioned social dancing to swing and blues music, but sometimes the music we move to with passion and joy has its roots in true tales of tragedy and sacrifice. What do you expect from the blues? On Tuesday night I was hanging at Denver's Mercury Cafe when...
I went to Hanoi expecting to be filled with anger and rage only to leave it with a sense of hope and peace. That was in November, 2012 – my first time to visit the Vietnamese capital – during one of those business trips that I often mix with some leisurely...
It’s always fun and interesting to receive a visit to the Girls Trek Too blog from guest trekker Gillian Rhodes, a young American expat in Cambodia. She made the following daytrip last fall, three-and-a-half-months into her eight-month stint as a dancer/choreographer...
Gillian Rhodes is currently living in Cambodia, working as a choreographer, teaching workshops and dancing, and immersing herself in the rich arts scene of Phnom Penh. As part of her work, she has been meeting all sorts of organizations, in all sorts of crazy places....
Please welcome my guest today, Karen McCullough, an author of mystery, romantic suspense, and fantasy novels who will share how a personal adventure played a part in one of her books. Karen is one of my fellow authors from the new e-book 25 Years in the Rearview...
Cara Lopez Lee is the author of They Only Eat Their Husbands. She’s a winner of The Moth StorySLAM and performs in many storytelling shows, including Unheard L.A., and Strong Words. Her writing appears in such publications as Los Angeles Times, Manifest-Station, and Writing for Peace. She’s a traveler, swing dancer, and baker of pies. Cara and her husband live in the beach-town of Ventura, California, where they enjoy tending their Certified Wildlife Habitat full of birds.
