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,
Marcia
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.
Continue reading “Soulful Sundays: African Drums”
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.
Continue reading “The Top Ten Places I’d Like to Visit”
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.
Those saucers are the light fixtures from inside the building. They just bounced off the window.
I love New York, New York!
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.
Continue reading “My 7 Links Project”
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.
Continue reading “For Ken on July 19th”
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 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.
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
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.
Here’s her interpretation of All I Do.
Enjoy!
Today would have been my mom’s 82nd birthday. Gloria loved flowers, roses, in particular. My, how she loved roses! It would have been such a treat for her to visit the New York Botanical Gardens today. But since she can’t, I’m sending these flowers to her.
Mama and I were alike and yet so different. She told me once that she wished she’d had my courage. I told her I wished I had her brains. I know for sure that if she had had half the educational opportunities I’ve had, she would have reached the moon. I’m glad I was able to tell her that.
For a long time, I measured myself against her. Probably still do.
She sewed, without a pattern. She’d take the measurements, cut the material and sew a dress, skirt, shirt or whatever. She crocheted and embroidered, baked and cooked, and did each equally well. Everyone loved her rum cakes.
Played the flute and taught me how. The difference is, at the end of the summer, I’d forget. She never did.
Did the payroll for my grandfather and my uncle every Friday afternoon. She never used a calculator and it was never wrong. She kept meticulous notes and filed the receipts neatly every week. And if there was ever a question from an employee, she could remember exactly how many hours they worked and what their payroll amount was and back up her memory with her records. She was never wrong.
In my first or second year of high school, my English teacher asked us to write a poem. We had read poems in class but she hadn’t taught us how to write one. I didn’t know how and worse, I didn’t think I could. I was almost in tears when I got home from school that day.
I wish I had kept the poem Mama dictated as she sat marking papers at the table. After I finished writing it, she started to hum a melody, one she had created for the poem. She grew even taller in my eyes that day.
Mama always said she could ‘read’ me like a book. She wasn’t bluffing – she could sniff out a lie every time. I learned early not even to try to fool her. Her dreams were prophetic, I never understood it until some of mine started to have the same quality.
She was a stickler for what was right and proper, and set the bar so high, I never thought I’d ever measure up. So I was shocked the first time Gloria’s words came out of my mouth!
For the last ten years, I’ve been negotiating life without her often sage advice and insight. I miss her everyday but I know the love we have for each other keeps me strong.
Happy Birthday, Mom!
I wanted to revisit Barcelona earlier this year. Had reserved a room at a hotel that’s located steps from the Ramblas. I was excited. For years since I left Barcelona, I had not felt the urge to return. My experience has so shaped me and my view about travel, I wanted to preserve the memories.
But quite unexpectedly, I started feeling that I needed to go. What would Barcelona look like since I was a student there 20 plus years ago? Would the images I’ve clutched to my heart look like anything I’d see? Would I recognize the street I used to live on?
All these questions flooded my brain as if the door behind which they had been stored had finally been opened. I was excited to find out.
Then life intervened and I returned to New York nursing my disappointment. It had been a perfect plan.
Things looked up late in May when I noticed an article in the New York Times about an exhibition that was set to open at the New York Botanical Gardens. Titled Spanish Paradise: Gardens of the Alhambra, it seemed an answer to my longing for Barcelona and Spain.
The Alhambra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a palace that was built in the 14th century by the Moorish leaders who ruled Southern Spain. Its gardens are beautiful and legendary. Although I had studied the history and architecture of the Alhambra, I had not seen it during my time in Spain. An exhibition was not Barcelona, but I knew it would satisfy my longing. So last weekend, my friend and I, cameras in tow, made a trip to the New York Botanical Gardens.
Located in the Bronx, the New York Botanical Gardens spreads approximately 250 acres. An oasis of tranquility and beauty, it houses plant laboratories, gardens, plant collections, old growth forest containing oak, beeches, cherry, birch, tulip and white ash trees, some more than 200 years old, a cascade waterfall and wetland area. It’s the perfect location for an exhibition of this nature.
The focus of the Spanish Paradise is the replica of a Spanish garden that takes over 15,000 square feet of the Haupt Conservatory. With the aroma of lavender, jasmine, sour orange and lime trees, olive, fig and saffron, you are transported immediately to Southern Spain.
It’s an exhibition that appeals to the senses. Poems about nature by the Spanish poet, Frederico Garcia Lorca, line the Poetry Walk while Flamenco dancers provide entertainment on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Sangria and tapas are available in the cafe.
In the library, rare prints, 19-century photographs of some of the courtyards of the Alhambra, paintings and other artifacts can be viewed. The exhibition also pays tribute to American poet, Washington Irving, who lived at the Alhambra while he was writing his collection of essays and sketches, Tales of the Alhambra, which sparked renewed interest in the palace. The Alhambra is one of Spain’s major tourist attractions.
Spanish Paradise sated my appetite temporarily. Now, I want to see the real thing.
Spanish Paradise: Gardens of the Alhambra will run until August 21, 2011 at the New York Botanical Gardens. 2900 Southern Blvd., New York. 718-817-8777.
Hours: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays
Tickets: All Garden, $20. Grounds only, $5. The grounds are also free all day on Wednesdays and from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturdays.
The Botanical Gardens are accessible by car or public transportation. If you’re in the New York area or planning to visit, add it to your list.
Enjoy!
