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If I was wrongfully burned as a witch, and then 500 years later someone named a street after me in a fit of remorse, would I feel the scales of justice had finally been balanced? Not even close. As paltry as the apology may be, I give Seville credit for joining other Spanish cities in…

​So I walked into the living room the other day and found Rich staring out the window at a pigeon. The bird — a lone male — was standing on the church roof just opposite, his feathers spread in full mating display, his head tilted to one side directing a come-hither look at my husband.…

When I read that a Catholic priest was using a squirt gun full of holy water to bless his parishioners’ Easter baskets while social distancing, I realized it was time to embrace the wacky side of the new dystopian order. This was in a suburb of Detroit back in April of 2020, and when Father…

​​“My sister’s dog has taken up painting,” remarked my sister-in-law Deb during a recent Zoom call. “He’s pretty good. Abstract art, of course.” “Yes, I can see how it would be hard to achieve realistic detail without an opposable thumb,” I replied. “But back up a minute. Her dog paints? Pictures? How?” It’s a simple…

I didn’t realize orgies were back in fashion until I read about the one Spanish police raided on New Year’s Eve. More than 50 participants were arrested in a suburb of Barcelona — not because anybody cared about their sexual hijinks, but because they’d violated Covid restrictions limiting indoor gatherings to ten people. A neighbor…

​Many years ago in California, a salesman showed up in my office holding a cardboard tray enticingly stuffed with cookies, candy bars, and chips. “I’m going to leave this in your break room,” he said. “No, I don’t want any money up front. We’re HonorSnacks . We trust that when one of you takes something,…

​I love entertaining and over the years I’ve learned to cope with all sorts of potential disasters: blizzards, drunken guests (yes, Dan, I’m thinking of your three-martini-chugging experiment), being cornered by a friend’s heartbroken suitor who read me his terrible poetry for an hour, a feral cat tearing the hide off one guest’s lapdog and…

In the US, brownies are nothing remarkable, but one of the benefits of expat life is that if I show up with a fresh-made batch here in Seville, I am worshiped as a domestic goddess. My husband being a die-hard chocoholic, I always add — in lieu of chocolate chips, which are rare and of…

“Maybe the universe is telling you something,” my friend Enrique said yesterday, when I had poured out the sorry tale of last week’s stuttering book launch , plagued by bizarre tech glitches that temporarily prevented some people from downloading free subscriber copies or signing up to receive updates on my blog. “But wait, there’s more,”…

​Actually, what I’m feeling is whew ! ​I loved writing Seville’s New Normal: Insider Tips for Visitors 2022 . It started out as a purely practical guide, a way to answer the questions that were constantly arriving in my email inbox: How has Seville changed over the past two years? Is it safe? Is it…