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Vote for Best Just Posts of 2009!
A few days ago, I received a pleasant surprise: two of my blog posts have been nominated for the Best of 2009 Just Posts. Just Posts for a Just World is a highly readable monthly roundtable of blog posts on social-justice issues from around the world. It’s curated by Holly at Cold Spaghetti and Alejna at Collecting Tokens, who wade through the blogosphere each month to find personal posts that “speak to the same thing — the lifting up of our planet and all that inhabit it.” The typical Just Post is candid and compassionate and outspoken, and reads like a real person speaking his/her own mind. I like that. I’m…
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Writing on Bullfighting for HuffPo
I’ve been away from An American in Lima for a little while (understatement) but thanks to my friend Levi Novey, aka Mr Green HuffPost, I’m getting a bigtime nudge to return to blogging. Which I do love doing, by the way. Levi let me hijack his column today to guest rant about bullfighting (The Twisted Temptations of Bullfighting in Peru). It’s a confession about the thing I experienced at Acho that I never wrote about before. Call it my testosterone moment in the bullring. The column includes nice photos by El Fotografo, by the way. I only went to the bullfights twice in Lima but I still think about what…
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Thanks for Shout Out, NatGeo
Got a minor thrill yesterday when I learned that An American in Lima is mentioned in the latest edition of National Geographic Traveler. Writing for the Sept. ’09 Lima destination guide (“48 Hours in Lima” by Nicholas Gill), Marisa Petrich observes that this blog “began as a way for author Barbara Drake to document her transition to a new culture, and now offers comments on local events, news, and culture. The site also includes links to local news, blogs, and videos in Spanish and English.” Yep, that’s what this old blog does. I’m glad that Petrich picked up on the fact that this is an opinion, not a travel, blog. As much…
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Blogging & Social Media, Festivals, Sacred Rituals, Religion, Money, Economics, Politics, Peru's Andes Mountains
Blogging about Greed and Injustice in Cusco
Many thanks to Alenja and Holly of Collecting Tokens for including my rant on the archbishop of Cusco as a June “Just Post for a Just World.” The Just Posts roundtable highlights “posts about topics of social justice and activism in all shapes and sizes,” writes Alenja. She adds that “Holly and I are pleased to share this wealth of posts that inspire and move and make us think.” I am honored to be part of the June roundtable, and I encourage everyone to check out Collecting Tokens’ recommended readings. I’ll be adding that “Just Posts” logo to my left sidebar as soon as I figure out the code. 🙂
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Why Twitter from Peru?
During my month-long hiatus from this blog, I got hooked on another form of social media: Twitter. Unlike Facebook, which facilitates staying touch with family and friends, Twitter is a freeform broadcast to just about anyone on the planet. That might not sound like a medium that would interest a relatively private person (like me), but it turns out that Twitter makes it ridiculously easy to connect with people you’ve always wanted to know. You can tweet with editors of magazines and publishing houses, ask a quick question of New Yorker writer Susan Orlean, compliment Dave Matthews on his latest album and keep up with environmental issues from the Guardian Online, The Climate Project and other…
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We Now Resume Our Regularly Scheduled Blogcast
If you’ve been wondering where An American in Lima has been for the past month — I’m pleased to say the site’s back and running fine. I didn’t know how much I loved blogging until a temporary software glitch prevented me from doing so. A number of emails and queries built up in my in-box over the last 30 days while I was trying to fix my blog. If you sent me a contact form and I haven’t gotten back to you yet: My apologies. I will be answering messages over the next two weeks. Thanks for your patience. What sent this site into hibernation was a bug in a recent version of…
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New Map Shows Readers of An American in Lima
I’ve just added a nifty map widget to this blog that shows in real time where readers of An American in Lima are located. The widget is located on the right sidebar, below “10 Most Popular Posts” and above the Twitter feed. The orange stars indicate visitors’ city, state and country. A pulsing circle around a star indicates that the person is visiting the blog now (that means you). As you can tell by the clusters of stars, the majority of the blog’s visitors come from the United States (hi, Saint Louis! hi, Pompano Beach!), Peru (hola, San Pedro de Lloc y Huancayo!) and Europe (bonjour, Gent! hola, Madrid!). I more or less…
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Blog Babysitting
For the next eight days I’ll be in the Andes with little to no Internet access, so I won’t be publishing new posts. This wasn’t my plan. I wrote a bunch and wanted to schedule them in advance, but the Schedule Post feature in WordPress (what this blog runs on) is a dud and it simply queues the posts ad infinitum. Sigh. It’s a programming glitch that WordPress has not solved, and if this kind of thing interests you, click here to follow the thread on the WordPress Boards. I’ll be back to the blog on Sunday, September 21, with news about my trip to Ausangate and hopefully some great…
