Haiti, it is said, is the place to discover how much can be done with little. ~ Wade Davis Like Julia Child with her sole meunière at La Coronne in Rouen, I remember the first meal I ate in Haiti. Flickering lights in the darkness below outlined the curves of Port-au-Prince, a … More Epis, the Haitian Condiment You Never Knew You Needed
My newest book garnered the following review from Midwest Book Review:* Stoves & Suitcases: Searching for Home in the World’s Kitchens should be in the holdings of any collection strong in culinary biography and history. What began as a search for home and roots evolved into a culinary exploration, as Cynthia D. Bertelsen documents in chapters that … More Midwest Book Review on “Stoves & Suitcases”
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Uniformed men on horseback, lassos at the ready, chase brown and black people stumbling in the surging water of the Rio Grande near Del Rio, Texas. The photographs shock. They call up long-buried images. Of the Ku Klux Klan night riding. Of patrollers chasing runaway slaves. Of Native Americans and the U.S. Cavalry at Wounded … More On the Borderlands
I don’t know about you, but these days I’m feeling a bit constricted by a myriad of circumstances. It’s high summer in Florida, with hurricanes kicking up mischief in the Atlantic, and COVID-19 continuing to sweep through the state with frightening relentlessness. Humidity and the heavy air of impending thunder storms don’t invite much meandering … More Dreams of Flying, or, Armchair Traveling Through Books, LED Screens, and Memories
Thanks to the COVID-19 virus, I’m missing Mother Nature. And Arizona. When I opened the July 2020 issue of Arizona Highways, I realized just how deep my discontent has become. Twenty-five writers and photographers tell stories of the places they yearned to see once quarantine ended, when they could clamber into a Jeep and hike … More Dreaming of the Sonoran Desert: Metaphors for Escape in the Time of COVID-19), Part 1
Yesterday, I crossed into Nogales, Mexico, and saw a bit of Nogales, Arizona, too. It’s a story that repeats itself every day of the year. At Ed’s Border Lot, my car fits nicely between two others – the one on the left with an Arizona plate, the one on the right with a Sonoran plate. … More A Day on the Border: Nogales, Mexico
“Let me take your coat, my dear.” I heard her voice as I stepped off the elevator, into the penthouse suite at the Chicago Hilton on a snowy day in late December. The tall, white-haired woman standing there, holding out her hands to me, drew me over the threshold, welcoming me. The color of Forget-Me-Nots, … More Prelude to a Bio-Bibliography