The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: Culture

  • The Importance of Including Stakeholders

    I had the opportunity to attend a meeting with hundreds of other City of Seattle employees in which one of the many goals was coming up with ways to get the community involved in the decision-making process for city projects. Anyone who has been to Seattle knows that it’s a beehive of activity. Something is…

  • Personal Space

    People want to touch my hair all the time. It’s freakishly thick, and at various times in my life it has been quite long. I wouldn’t mind so much if they asked first. But no. They just dive right in there. It feels like a violation. And one time when I was in 7th grade,…

  • Family Norms

    One spring break in college I went home with a friend. Half Catholic Italian, half Jewish, hers was a noisy, welcoming household. Neighbors would come and go without knocking on their door, and help themselves to whatever happened to be cooking on the stove. The house was full of light and crackled with energy. And…

  • Revel in the Differences

    I went through this period in my life where my family was so poor that all we had to eat was a bag of potatoes someone had given my mother. No oil to fry them with, even, so my mother baked them. To this day I rarely can bring myself to eat a baked potato.…

  • Epic Journey

    If you read no other blog besides this one (I’m so freakin’ modest), you absolutely must check out that of Paul Salopek on the National Geographic website. He is the man who is taking the Out of Eden Walk, a seven year, 21,000 mile journey from the cradle of civilization in Ethiopia to the tip…

  • Spanish Proverbs

    One of the things I love most about the Spanish language, and one of the reasons I chose to learn it, is that it is full of wise sayings. There is no exact translation for some of them, and that’s a pity, because a lot of them are gems. We can learn a great deal…

  • Walking Between Cultures

    One of the things I love most about the virtual world of Second Life is that you get to meet people from all over the world. One friend, C.N., is a young man who is an amazingly talented artist from Vietnam. I met him just as he was finishing his secondary education and applying to…

  • The Tragedy That Is Damascus, Syria

    Damascus, Syria is considered a UNESCO World Heritage site because it is the world’s oldest continuously-inhabited city. In the past 10,000 years, it has seen the rise and fall of Aramaeans, Assyrians, Persians, Seleucids, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans. It is a city full of history and culture. Much of its rich archeology remains buried beneath…

  • South Carolina Sweetgrass Baskets

    A couple of summers ago I had the distinct pleasure of spending six weeks in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina in order to operate the Ben Sawyer swing bridge. That’s a story for another day, But I will say I loved the area. I spent a lot of time exploring Charleston, and Mt. Pleasant itself is…

  • I’m Fixin’ To

    When I was 10 years old we moved from a mansion in Connecticut to a tent in Florida. I was uprooted from family and friends and seasons and all things familiar, and I never felt safe again. I was angry and terrified. My mother turned into someone I didn’t know. She would come home from…