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”
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
Open-air markets symbolize community to me. Time as commodity – which is how we view it in this country – disappears in the hustle and bustle of these markets. What matters is relationships between people. Community. And hospitality, in other words. Hospitality takes many forms. Learning how to recognize those forms takes much time, sometimes … More Hospitality, a Forgotten Concept in Today’s World: A Tale of Ice Cubes
There’s something very disturbing to me about witnessing 20,000 armed soldiers in the U.S. Capitol building. Why? Perhaps this story might explain why. At least partially. I lived on an island in the Caribbean – Haiti – for nearly three years. My husband Mike worked with a USAID-sponsored farming-systems project, surveying Haiti’s agricultural infrastructure by … More Memories of Chaos: Reflecting on Dictatorship
Haiti is NOT a shithole, Mr. Trump. I should know about that. I lived in Haiti for nearly three years. And you, you’ve never even been there. And yet, here you are again, saying something insulting and derogatory, knowing nothing about what you’re talking about. Yes, I’m talking about your woefully ignorant comments about “shithole … More Haiti is NOT a Shithole, Mr. Trump
In March 2011, Japan suffered an 8.9 earthquake, a magnitude not often experienced. While the massive earthquake last year in Haiti was less on the Richter scale, it nonetheless did terrible damage that is still not wholly cleaned up. The gruesome scenes from Japan turned my mind back to Haiti. In Haiti, the tragic earthquake … More Remembering Haiti Post-Carnival (Kanaval)
[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]
CYNTHIA D. BERTELSEN 