The Chemo Versus Sex Ratio
“So… how often do you get it?” asked a friend in an e-mail. “More often than sex? You better not have to get chemo more often than sex.” I received that e-mail six years ago this week, while sitting in …
Author: Margie Smith Holt
Luna de Miel (The Honeymoon)
It was a sultry night in Cartagena de Indias. The prostitutes were lazing on benches and pretending to talk on their cell phones in the shadow of the Puerta del Reloj, where the three wide arches of the main …
Tagged with: travel
On the Road: Cartagena
“It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is …
Tagged with: travel
Winter, Through the Looking Glass
I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer …
Midnight, Atlantic Standard Time
Originally published in the St. John Sun Times In typical island fashion, it was hard to tell when the old year ended and the new one began. The party was at Skinny Legs in Coral Bay where the unadvertised festivities (New …
Thanksgiving Questions
Originally published in the St. John Sun Times We are now hoping to arrive by Thanksgiving. The boat is ready. After spending two months in the yard in Maine, the 70-foot Sonny is docked in Newport, Rhode Island, freshly painted and …
Four Score and Seven Years Ago…
How much can you say in a two-minute speech? On the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, here are Abraham Lincoln’s immortal words. Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived …
She Should Have Called re:Write
Words aren’t generally the first things that come to mind when thinking about the opera, but writing figures prominently in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. In Act I, the bookworm heroine, Tatiana, meets Onegin, falls instantly and madly in love, and decides …
On the Road: Baltimore Boulevard
Assateague is a windswept barrier island off the coast of Maryland. In 1962 there was a 15-mile road running down the middle of it, all the way to the Virginia state line. “Baltimore Boulevard” was built to pave the way, …
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On the Road: Color in the Catskills
Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and …
Tagged with: travel