Mercury must be retrograde. I have no other explanation for the big and little things that have gone out of control in the last few weeks.
It started with my phone. A few days ago, it started shutting itself off. Then it began producing error messages that technical support has been unable to explain.
Yesterday morning, I woke to find an email from blogger friend, Rhonda, alerting me to a redirect error on my blog. With help from technical support, we fixed it but when I tried to reinstall my blog page, I inadvertently deleted all my posts, everything I’ve written since last year – nearly 300 posts.
Thanks, Rhonda, for alerting me to the redirect error on blog. In fixing it, I inadvertently deleted my content so I have to have it restored. Not sure how long this will take.
Not the kind of thing that I wanted to have happen this week.
Hope to be back up very soon,
On most summer weekends, the sounds of drums, African drums float like a breeze through my window. In my neighborhood of brownstones, hipsters and big city sounds, it feels odd sometimes. But it shouldn’t be.
For more than 20 years now, drummers have been gathering in parks and other public spaces in informal drum circles to beat their drums, practice their craft and entertain people as they pass by. Sometimes they stop and watch, or just dance but the music never stops as there are always fresh drummers ready to replace those who had been playing for a while.
Synonymous with Africa, the drum was brought to the New World by African slaves. It is the heartbeat of African music at home and in the Diaspora.
Like a lot of people, I love color. Red’s my favorite.
Color affects mood. For example, red energizes, blue and green soothe.
Colorful garbage can, Durban
This garbage can surprised me. Wonder if those colors encourage people to be more diligent in putting waste in it?
Colorful fruits
One of the things I love about summer is the variety of colorful fruits available. These looked so beautiful, I had to take a photo.
Colorful flowers
I took these at the New York Botanical Gardens. As you might expect, the Botanical Gardens is full of beautiful flowers. These stood out for their color and vibrancy.
Colorful ricksha
From the moment I saw these rickshas on a website, I knew I had to see one up close. It didn’t fail to impress.
There are so many places I’d like to visit that I get overwhelmed when I try to choose. Each place has something that appeals to me.
For example, although I’m not a good swimmer, I love water and places that have beautiful beaches call me. I discovered recently that I also love the mountains. Mountains capture my imagination and give me a sense of peace so any place that has both makes me happy.
I’ve always felt that I was born in the wrong era and the wrong place. I love looking at old buildings and visiting quaint villages that take me back in time. I’m also in awe of old stone monuments, Gothic cathedrals and the ruins of ancient civilizations.
New York has a million faces. It just depends on where you are. Of course, the city looks very different when you’re not at ground level.
I took this from the Time Warner Building. Before the sun set, I could see directly to New Jersey. A few hours later, these clouds came into view and washed the buildings with an inky tint.
View from the Time Warner Building
Those saucers are the light fixtures from inside the building. They just bounced off the window.
Sherry of Colorful Footsteps has just nominated me to participate in the “My 7 Links Project” (Thanks, Sherry!)
Initiated by Tripbase, the My 7 Links Project aims “to unite bloggers (from all sectors) in a joint endeavor to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again.”
I’m very honored that Sherry has nominated me. It was difficult to select just six posts but I hope you’ll like the ones I chose.
July is a busy month for my family. We celebrate a cluster of birthdays from July 10 to the 16th. Then on July 19th, I stop to remember my father. It is on this day in 1996 that he broke the only promise he ever made to me. “I don’t plan on going anywhere,” he’d said. But by July, he was gone.
Like my mother, my father was larger than life in my eyes. They had separated after I was born but he was never really out of our lives. He visited as often as he could and wrote regularly to my mother.
Through her eyes, I got to know a man who “cut a dashing figure in his uniform.” He was intelligent, chivalrous, charming and strong in his beliefs.
Given the 90 degree temperatures that have returned to the North East this week, it’s difficult not to think of hot as anything but weather related.
But there are many shades of hot: trendy, now, sexy, peppery, spicy, piquant, electric, stolen, in trouble with the police, etc.
I mulled over the different meanings of hot as I looked through my photos for one or two that would fit the bill. These are what I came up with.
The Fire is Lit, Calabash Literary Festival
The second time I attended the Calabash Literary Festival in Treasure Beach, Jamaica, I went down to the beach with several hundred attendees for the beach party and the lighting of the bonfire. The Fire is Lit(erature) was the festival’s theme that year.
Scotch Bonnet peppers
Named for its resemblance to the Tam o’shanter hat, Scotch Bonnet is one of the hottest peppers in the world with a rating of 100,000 – 350,000 on the Scoville scale, the measurement of the piquance of chili peppers. (As a comparison, jalapenos range 2,500-8,000.) It is an essential ingredient in many Jamaican dishes – escoveitch, jerk, curries, etc.
I made the mistake once of cutting up Scotch Bonnet with my bare hands to make pickled pepper. I didn’t think they would be very hot – because of the soil composition in the U.S., the Scotch Bonnet grown here lose a lot of its piquancy, especially after the first planting. My hands burned for three days. But don’t let that scare you. Eating peppers has been shown to boost metabolism.
Now, I can’t say that’s the reason my grandfather used to eat them. I just know that he did, almost always raw as if he were eating sweet peppers.
The key to eating or cooking with Scotch Bonnet, or any pepper, is to strip away the seeds and the membrane that stores capsaicin, the ingredient which gives them their heat. I always have some in my refrigerator and use it liberally in just about everything.
Scotch Bonnet can also be found in dishes from West Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Guyana, Grenada, Surinam, Haiti and Cayman.
My wonderful blog buddy, Tosh Fomby who blogs at Totsy Mae, introduced me to this singer, Maysa Leak. I’d never heard about her
Maysa Leak, photo courtesy of YouTube
before but right away, I felt like I ‘knew’ her. She reminds me of someone else, though I can’t remember who. It’ll come back to me when I’m not trying so hard.
Mayas was born in 1966 in Baltimore, Maryland. She’s been a lead singer for the British jazz/funk/R&B band, Incognito, and counts Chaka Khan as an inspiration.
Besides her work with Incognito, she has several solo albums to her credit.
