The trouble with having a blog is a sudden desire to take basic elements like your decision to go to Africa with shoes that suddenly feel too small, how to fix the squeak of your van with a wooden spatula, the death of your grandmother, the unexpected appearance of antivenin five months after you needed it, and an utter sense … Read More
Appalachia Merge
Travel has a way of smashing your life together and making you earn the fall-out. I’m on a plane, again—this time from the southeast to home. I’m back on tour and just spoke, got sandbagged, and took a flu shot to the left shoulder all in three days in North Carolina. I like the southeast. The air feels good, the … Read More
The Weight of Your World
I got married young. Back then, I would have never admitted I was young—back then I was 21 and had it figured out. Back then is nothing like now. Now it’s ten years later, I’m single, I’m dating, I’m changing my career, and nothing is figured out. Does anyone have it figured out? The driving conversation we all seem to … Read More
Two Weeks In
There’s the retired schoolteacher who spent four years, or two stints, in the Peace Corps in southern Ethiopia. He remembers the people. The food. The peace. The young woman who traveled overland from Kenya and to the Red Sea, across the contested boarder in the back of jeep, just to see if she could. She wants to know how to … Read More
Ethiopian Birr
As of January 2nd, 345 Ethiopian Birr (ETB) was the equivalent to $37.99. On that day my publisher set the price for my book and now, a month and a half later, my book is stamped with both prices on the back. The ETB price comes first and this, and the very fact it is on my book, makes me … Read More