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Progress in a poor town

I just returned from San Francisco, the land of plenty, bounty abounds everywhere you look from brains to tchotchkes, it’s all going on there. And yet, I haven’t seen so many homeless people in a long time. I watched a man fixing his cardboard box shelter and thought of Managua in the 1960s and the people sleeping in cardboard boxes. During that period Somoza reigned as if landless peasants were no different than rats in…

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All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go

Went to Cafe de la Presse for one more of those bowl filled decaf lattes before I’m off to SFO to hopefully make my way home. Why is it that this time of year – Southern Decadence – that a storm is threatening Louisiana. It’s like it’s Ground Hog Day every Labor Day Weekend. Meanwhile, I went out with my boyfriends here in San Francisco for a night of Western Decadence and we found ourselves…

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Lock and load

I was reading a NYT article about a film about an adopted son called “I’m Glad My Mother Is Alive” and of course, like any adopted parent, I read with hesitation as it described the son’s turmoil and anger over having been given up for adoption. Yes I cannot know the future or for that matter Tin and how he will be with himself and his situation. He has a lot to digest when he…

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Fortune says time alone

Last night in the lobby while my friend was getting her tarot cards read, I opened a fortune cookie offered to me and it said, You have a basic need for solitude some of the time. True that. I’ve been away from home for nearly a week now and attending a conference with 45,000 others doesn’t sound much like being alone, and having work related dinners or events every night doesn’t sound much like being…

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What’s your color?

I think I wrote a few weeks ago about being referred to as a caucasian recently during a cocktail chat I was having with someone I didn’t know. It sort of made me flinch in the same way that black does now that I have a dark skinned child who is not black, but a honeyed, caramel gorgeous brown. And yet I struggle with calling him African American because no one is calling me Spanish…

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Home to sleep, perchance to dream

Sleep is eluding me on this trip despite the fact that I am more relaxed than ever. It’s a mystery. I lay here in the stillness of the night listening to the mosquito buzz in my ear. At 4:30 am you can’t get coffee anywhere in San Francisco. Damn. No dreams only the waking thoughts that intersect – I’m here at this conference, it’s the first one in a long time that has me intrigued.…

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