Category: Writing

Articles by Mya Guarnieri

50,000 Steps in a City Where the Sidewalk Never Ends

by adminin Featured Articles, Writing
THE New York Times
In Montevideo, Uruguay, the nearly 14-mile waterside promenade La Rambla serves as an outdoor living room for locals. It’s also a perfect antidote to visitors’ winter blues.
Photographs by Tali Kimelman
Photographs by Tali Kimelman
La Rambla draws Montevideanos to the shore of the Río de la Plata to bask in the sun of the Southern Hemisphere summer.

For a window into the soul of a city, take a stroll along the waterfront: Think of the Seine walkways in Paris, the Copacabana promenade in Rio or the Charles River Esplanade in Boston. Or the nearly 14-mile palm-fringed ribbon called La Rambla, in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

One of the longest sidewalks in the world, La Rambla meanders along the shimmering estuary Río de la Plata, past beaches, wine bars and purple-blossomed jacaranda trees, statues and sculptures, soccer matches and friends engrossed in conversations over cups of yerba mate.

If you go in the summer — as the Northern Hemisphere shivers in the cold — you may find yourself part of a mass migration of locals toting folding chairs to the promenade, turning it into, essentially, the city’s outdoor living room.

People sitting along a stretch of curved sea wall above rocky waters. In the foreground, two men in black T-shirts are sitting on folding chairs. There is a white dog in one man’s lap. In the background, there is an old church and a line of high-rise buildings.
A section of La Rambla near the Old City. Locals bring folding chairs, pets and cups of mate to socialize along the promenade.

The promenade stitches together different pieces of Montevideo, a city of about 1.3 million, socially as well as geographically. On it, you’ll find Uruguayans from all social strata. It’s “the city’s thermometer,” as Natalia Jinchuk, a Montevideo native and author, described it to me.

With my own thermometer dipping and my imagination stoked, I planned an early-winter long weekend in Montevideo, a flower-speckled city that melds Old World and Modernist architecture, to boost my spirits with my own ramble on La Rambla.

A brightly lit amusement-park ride spins people sitting in chairs above the ground as the sun sets over the skyline of a city and the water next to it.
The amusement park at Parque Rodó.

On a balmy Friday morning, I set out on foot from my home base, the Palladium Business Hotel, at the edge of the fashionable Pocitos neighborhood, and headed toward Parque Rodó, an urban gem of a park a few miles west along La Rambla.

The red-and-white-striped promenade runs between a busy road and the Río de la Plata, a wide waterway separating Uruguay and Argentina. The path follows a roughly west-east axis, changing names as it winds from the Capurro neighborhood, northwest of the Old City to the high-end Carrasco area in the east. The most popular section runs from the Old City to Pocitos.

Sailboats moored on a glassy bay, their bare masts silhouetted against a partly cloudy pinkish sky.
The Yacht Club Uruguayo, near the Pocitos neighborhood.

Heading west on La Rambla, I saw sailboats bobbing outside the century-old Yacht Club Uruguayo. Women sat on a grassy knoll, their young children toddling about. Two friends on a bench appeared to be deep in conversation over bread and strawberries. A couple sipped a cup of maté, a caffeinated drink common in South America, from the same metal straw. Near a busy skateboard park, I passed some food trucks, including Soy Pepe el Rey de las Tortafritas (chuckle-inducing translation: I Am Pepe, the King of Fried Bread). At the Playa de los Pocitos, a handful of shirtless men played soccer on the sand. I stopped in front of a granite plaque to read “Sonnet to a Palm,” by the Uruguayan poet Juana de Ibarbourou, and was moved by its final stanza likening a palm tree to an eternal homeland.

A palm-tree-covered hillside is bathed in golden light beneath a blue sky. The bottom of the hill slopes into a small lake.
Parque Rodó includes a lake where you can rent a paddleboat.

Parque Rodó, the destination on that leg of my ramble, includes an amusement park, a lake where you can rent a paddleboat, a “castle” housing a small children’s library, the National Museum of the Visual Arts and a modest flea market. I happened upon a small plaza with benches ringing an octagonal water fountain; both bore tiles embellished with arabesque designs that reminded me of the Middle East. I rested on a bench, enjoying the feel of the tiles, hot beneath my bare legs, and thought of the winter winds howling back in the United States.

A broad five-story building built of warm, gray stone with two towers and a glassy top floor between them. There is a wide plaza in front, with geometric designs in red tiles.
The architecture of Montevideo ranges from Old World to Modernist, with many beautiful buildings lining La Rambla.

La Rambla strings together neighborhoods with distinct architectural styles as well as heritage sites and parks. With dozens of statues and other works of art, it is a tentative candidate for UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites — its entry calls it “a veritable open-air gallery.”

Some have described La Rambla as a through line uniting the country’s past, present and future; the Uruguayan artist and writer Gustavo Remedi said the promenade ties together a city that “has a tendency to fall apart.” Marcello Figueredo, the author of the nonfiction book “Rambla,” which offers a detailed look at the waterfront walkway, told me the promenade was “both a limit and an escape,” a border between Montevideo and the rest of the world.

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Back on city streets, I headed toward the Pocitos neighborhood, wandering garden-like lanes rich with architectural details: the contrasting lines and curves of Art Deco, Venetian and oriel windows, and red roofs. I glimpsed hand-painted floor tiles and smelled caramelized sugar through the open doorway of Camomila, where I enjoyed a lemon tart and a cortado in a small, sun-dappled courtyard.

A bartender wearing a dark apron, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a dark brimmed hat is holding a small torch next to a tall, icy drink with mint and an orange slice on top.
The motto of Dalí, a bar in Pocitos whose name is inspired by the painter, is “There is nothing more surreal than reality.”
A woman holds a deck of tarot cards fanned out in one hand. The “El Diablo” card, which has a picture of a person holding a butterfly beneath two grasping hands, is on top of the deck.
The Dalí bar does one-card tarot readings using a replica of the deck created by Salvador Dalí.

On my way back to La Rambla, I stopped at a small secondhand store, 3B Bueno Bonito Barato (Good Cute Cheap). Though it was narrow and cluttered, I found some gems, including a pink bolero embroidered with jade vines and orange, yellow and blue flowers, a design that evoked the jacaranda blossoms piling up outside on the sidewalk like drifts of snow.

Just down the street, Dalí, a kitschy bar and tapas restaurant, caught my eye with the tagline “There is nothing more surreal than reality,” and everything inside flowed from that: When someone ordered the Jamaica cocktail, Bob Marley’s “Is This Love?” blasted from the speakers as a singing waitress delivered the red, yellow and green drink; everyone joined in, belting out the lyrics. The waitress also offered one-card tarot readings using a replica of the deck Salvador Dalí created. I drew the magician, which, she told me, signaled that if I believe in my own powers, I will manifest my dreams. And I thought I’d just stopped in for a drink.

A woman wearing flowered pants, a pink top, a gray bucket hat and a bright yellow fanny pack on the front walks with other people down a brick-paved street lined with coffee shops, stores and benches, where people relax and look at their phones.
The Old City of Montevideo, near the Port Market.

You can’t go far in Montevideo without smelling smoke from the city’s many steakhouses, or parrillas, grilling meat over wood fires. Much of that aroma comes from the Port Market, a maze of restaurants and bars in a hall with a wrought-iron roof made in Liverpool and shipped to Uruguay in the 1860s.

The market, wedged between La Rambla and the Old City, would be a seven-mile walk west from my hotel along the winding promenade, so when I set out on Saturday, I plotted a shortcut through city streets, with plans to rejoin the promenade at the market.

Three people are sitting at a bar where, in the background, sausages and other meats are being grilled.
Meat lovers converge on the Port Market, where they can eat grilled delicacies at parrillas, or steakhouses.

Near the city center, I was delighted to discover Uruguayans practicing their tango moves for an impromptu audience at Juan Pedro Fabini Square — named for the engineer who proposed La Rambla to the city in 1922. After passing a stone gateway to the Old City, I browsed tables displaying local art and handmade jewelry along the main pedestrian thoroughfare that connects the Old City and La Rambla.

Then I heard the sound of candombe, a style of Afro-Uruguayan music, coming from a side street. Men decked out in white and blue, and women wearing white turbans, appeared. The men banged drums, and the women swooshed their flowing white skirts back and forth to the rhythm. Candombe is ubiquitous during Montevideo’s carnival, which runs from January to March.

Eventually, I arrived at the Port Market, which Mr. Figueredo, the author of “Rambla,” calls a “smoke-filled temple.” Though meat is indeed god at the market, even vegetarians will feel a sense of awe. Diners sit elbow-to-elbow at bars that ring grills beneath ornate iron arches, the sun filtering in through skylights. In the cathedral-like space, it was hard to tell the difference between indoors and outdoors.

A wide, crescent-shaped beach lined with tall modern-looking buildings, most of which have large windows and balconies. People are lying on the sand and swimming among the low waves offshore.
Pocitos Beach with La Rambla in the background.

Having clocked more than 50,000 steps in two days, I decided to spend Sunday relaxing in the section of La Rambla alongside the well-heeled Punta Carretas area, which juts out into the Río de la Plata not far from the Old City.

At Baco Vino y Bistro, I tried crostini topped with local goat cheese alongside a glass of Uruguayan tannat, the country’s national wine. Dark red, rich with fruit, the wine packs a tannin-filled punch with each sip.

Back on La Rambla, I couldn’t resist checking out Artico, a cafeteria-style fast-seafood restaurant right along the shore packed with delicacies like quinoa with shrimp, Galician-style squid, and an inventive, savory pumpkin pionono filled with tuna, cream cheese, arugula, bell pepper, onion and black olives — all priced by weight.

A child in a yellow T-shirt kicks a soccer ball on a grassy field overlooking the water at sunset. Two people are sitting on folding chairs, while others are strolling and sitting in the grass nearby.
Enjoying the sunset in the Punta Carretas neighborhood. Soccer is one of the most popular ways to spend the long summer days along La Rambla.

La Rambla was in full swing: It was the weekend before Uruguay’s elections, and a celebratory mood prevailed. Music blared from beneath canopies, and supporters of politicians from all sides handed out the same thing to passers-by: the blue-and-white Uruguayan flag with a tiny sun in the corner. Cars honked as they passed; everyone waved and smiled.

Down on the beach, people played soccer and volleyball, vendors sold cotton candy and candied apples, and clumps of friends, many sitting in those ubiquitous folding chairs, passed around wine bottles. Laying a towel on the sand, I peeled off my dress to reveal a skimpy one-piece I’d bought in Pocitos, and claimed a prime spot in Montevideo’s outdoor living room.

A couple sits arm in arm, leaning back along a stone wall next to a bench and a column. They’re looking out over the blue water, which extends to the horizon.
Locals use La Rambla for sports, celebrations, socializing and, of course, for enjoying the view with loved ones.

To Really See Peru, Hop on (and Off) the Bus

by adminin Writing
THE New York Times
Most travelers fly between cities like Lima, Cuzco and Arequipa, but if you want to explore beaches, deserts and mountains at your own pace, try a hop-on, hop-off bus.
Photographs by Angela Ponce
Photographs by Tali Kimelman
The roughly decade-old Peru Hop bus service lets travelers choose a route and then decide how much time they want to spend at each stop along the way.

I was in a dune buggy perched atop a sandy ridge near the small oasis town of Huacachina, Peru, looking down a nearly 60-foot drop. As the driver gunned the engine, I began to question my decision to sign up for this tour.

Down we went. I closed my eyes and screamed, and then, as the dune buggy pitched upward and slowed, the scream became a laugh. I opened my eyes to find us stopped on top of another sandy ridge, this one with a breathtaking view: Before us, an ocean of beige ripples cast black shadows in their troughs.

The driver killed the engine and silence swaddled us. I climbed out of the buggy and plunked down on the soft, warm sand, as the sun eased down on the horizon.

To think I’d almost missed this.

People and open-sided vehicles amid sand dunes that extend toward the distant lights of a town and the setting sun.
The sand dunes near Huacachina, Peru.
A man sliding headfirst down a tan-colored sand dune. He is wearing a hat and a mask, and there is sand spraying up behind his feet.
Sandboarding is among the activities visitors can try in the dunes.
An open-sided dune buggy speeds along a flat, sandy area, kicking up a trail of sand as a red-and-white Peruvian flag flies from a flexible rod attached to the rear of the vehicle.
Dune buggy rides are one thrilling way to experience the desert around Huacachina.
A line of people and a dune buggy are silhouetted by the setting sun at the top of a darkened dune.
Watching the sunset from the top of a dune near Huacachina.

Just a few hours before, I had been sitting on a bus making its way south along the coast when a new friend, Dax, asked if I’d signed up for the dune buggies in Huacachina — our next stop. “Oh, no, I don’t do things like that,” I’d answered.

“Yeah, neither do I,” said Dax. “But I’ll do it if you do.”

When I was planning my trip to Peru last spring, I’d picked three cities, Lima, Arequipa and Cuzco, drawing a neat triangle of flights on the map. But there were two big problems with that itinerary: Flying would mean sudden shifts in elevation and possible altitude sickness, and I would miss everything between those cities.

Then I discovered Peru Hop, a roughly decade-old hop-on, hop-off bus service that offers flexible itineraries and dates, giving travelers the freedom to stay longer at any stop they want to explore further. It seemed perfect.

There are other, less expensive bus companies crisscrossing the country, including public routes where pickpockets are a risk. Peru Hop, however, offers recommended tours and accommodations, easily signed up for through the website, an app or even aboard the bus. Peru Hop also offers door-to-door pickup and drop-off in most places.

I chose the Full South to Cuzco line, which starts in coastal Lima and stops in Paracas, Huacachina, Nazca, Arequipa, Puno and Cuzco. While this line takes six days and five nights, I tacked on some extra time in a few places, making my trip two weeks long. I planned to start in Lima and end with the kaleidoscopic Red Valley and Rainbow Mountain, a hike that includes a brutal straight-to-the-top stretch at a lung-busting 16,000 feet above sea level.

A standard ticket on that line costs $219; I paid an extra $10 for the V.I.P. ticket, which offers a little more flexibility. Excursions cost extra, and most ranged from $19 for the dune buggy ride to $39 for Rainbow Mountain. I booked on the Peru Hop website well ahead and paid in U.S. dollars.

Along the way, I left space for serendipity. Because Peru Hop isn’t a traditional tour, you can play along or do your own thing. It turned out that this combination of structure and freedom opened doors for me to visit places and do things I never imagined.

A sandy beach with rolling waves. There is an ocher-colored cliff at the far side of the beach, and across the water, a brown landscape rises toward the sky.
Paracas National Reserve, south of Lima. The word paracas means “rain of sand” in Quechua, Peru’s most widely spoken Indigenous language.

The edge of the golden desert collides with the navy blue Pacific Ocean in the town of Paracas, which means “rain of sand” in Quechua, Peru’s most widely spoken Indigenous language. Strong winds, often topping 50 miles per hour, make Paracas popular with kitesurfers.

At Paracas National Reserve — where the salt-spiked sand glittered under my feet, lending the place a magical feeling — I stood on the edge of a cliff and experienced a gust so strong, I was certain I would be lifted off the ground.

“This is a landscape you record with your soul,” said one guide.

After a night at the simple but clean Peru Hop-recommended Hotel Residencial Los Frayles ($43), at dawn the next day, I joined two fellow Hopsters, Ernesto and Stephanie, a brother and sister from El Salvador, for a kayak tour of Paracas Bay. Pushing off from the shore, we paddled so close to a pair of dolphins that we saw drops of water spraying from their blowholes as they exhaled. Enchanted, we followed the dolphins for so long that we had to run to catch our scheduled boat tour to the Islas Ballestas.

A rocky sea arch with birds flying above it and dark blue water beneath.
The Islas Ballestas, about 10 miles offshore, are sometimes called the Poor Man’s Galápagos.
Two gray birds with bright red and orange beaks perch on a next amid moss-covered rocks.
The Islas Ballestas are home to a variety of wildlife, including many types of birds.
Two small gray, white and black penguins in a rocky outcropping.
Visitors to the Islas Ballestas can spot Humboldt penguins.
A sea lion rests atop some craggy rocks with its eyes closed and a peaceful look on its face.
Sea lions are some of the islands’ residents.

Sometimes called the Poor Man’s Galápagos, the Islas Ballestas offer a dizzying array of marine life but are far easier to reach, only about 10 miles off the coast. Even though choppy waters cut our tour disappointingly short, we glimpsed sea lions lounging on a wedge of rock, Humboldt penguins balanced on tiny ledges and colorful crabs skittering across islands of stone that rose straight out of the sea. We also saw the Paracas Candelabra, a mysterious geoglyph on a seaside hill, keeping silent watch over the waves and wind.

The candelabra whetted our appetites for its much larger cousins, the Nazca Lines, which we reached by bus after our dune buggy adventure in Huacachina, where I spent one night at the Hostal Curasi ($60). Its rooftop restaurant offered stunning views of the surrounding sand dunes.

A treeless brown hill rising above craggy cliffs. There is a giant three-pronged candelabra-like image etched into the hillside.
The Paracas Candelabra, a mysterious geoglyph etched into a seaside hill.

Many tourists fly over the Nazca Lines, etched on a coastal plain, to glimpse them from above. From the bus, I got a different view: As we passed the geoglyphs, I saw what appeared to be random tracks in the desert. They looked like the careless work of teenagers driving their cars on the beach rather than something deliberate. I was sure the signs announcing the Nazca Lines were mistaken.

But from the top of the observation tower, they popped into focus: a lizard, a tree and outstretched hands that reminded me of a leaping frog. I envisioned ancient people moving through this vast, arid landscape, working toward a collective vision of how the lines would appear from above. The feat seemed even more astounding after I had traversed the same miles aboard the bus.

A vast lake with patches of golden reeds surrounded by low, brown, mostly treeless mountains, under a partly cloudy sky.
Lake Titicaca near Puno, Peru. The lake, at roughly 12,500 feet in elevation, is home to floating islands built of reeds by the Uros people, who believe it is the birthplace of the sun. (Getty)

In Puno, on the shores of roughly 12,500-foot-high Lake Titicaca, I strayed from the Peru Hop itinerary because it didn’t offer an overnight option on the water. I felt I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to stay on one of the floating reed islands built by the Indigenous Uros people, who believe the lake to be the birthplace of the sun.

Once my Airbnb host had docked and let me into the one-room house I’d booked for the night ($137), I snuggled up under thick blankets in a king-size bed and peered out a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows toward the water. Gray clouds so heavy they reminded me of granite lumbered onto the lake. A thick bolt of lightning connected sky and shore, and soon, rivulets of water were streaking the windows. The reed island rocked ever so gently, and the steady beat of raindrops on the tin roof lulled me to sleep.

The next night, I began the last stretch of my journey — boarding an overnight bus to Cuzco, where the gorgeous Tierra Viva Hotel ($105 a night) would be my home base as I prepared for my most challenging adventure, Rainbow Mountain, on a tour I had booked through Peru Hop.

The cold minivan that ferried a dozen other tourists and me to Rainbow Mountain set out from Cuzco at 3:30 a.m., bouncing along the cobblestone streets. Soon, we were in the countryside, where the morning fog made it seem as if we were driving through the sky. And then we were racing along a wisp of a dirt road carved into the side of a mountain, Andean huayno music blasting from the speakers as we jostled along the edge of a terrifying drop-off.

Once we had reached the Rainbow Mountain parking lot, which sits at an elevation of roughly 15,000 feet, our guide urged us to try a two-minute test hike on a gentle incline. When we regrouped, some of us were already winded. The guide explained that the peak was about a mile and a half away and that, at this altitude, it usually took people about 45 minutes to reach the top.

If we were struggling now, our guide warned, it was just going to get worse. Anyone concerned about making it to the top, or who wanted to conserve energy for the hike to nearby Red Valley, could pay 15 soles, about $4, to take a motorbike or ride a horse most of the way up. Neither option would take us all the way. Eventually, we’d have to walk.

Starting on horseback, I discovered you don’t actually climb Rainbow Mountain. You ascend a sandy path on an adjacent mountain so you can get a look at the colorful stripes. After dismounting, I began the final stretch to the summit, and Rainbow Mountain rose before me, one stripe at a time, looking like some divine entity had carefully painted neat bands of color on an enormous canvas and then laid the whole thing across the mountain, blanketing the rock with burgundy, yellow, teal and purple.

At the summit, I snapped some photos and then, dizzy from the lack of oxygen, descended. At the bottom, I handed my guide an extra 20 soles for access to the trail that led to Red Valley, and then veered off to begin the approximately half-mile hike, this time along a footpath so narrow I was certain I would tumble off and roll down the sandy slope.

Unlike Rainbow Mountain, Red Valley doesn’t appear little by little on the horizon. There’s no sense of where you’re going and when you will get there. Closer to the sun than I’d ever been, its rays beating down on me, I stopped for a moment and tried to figure out how much farther I had to go. My legs shook.

Just when I was about ready to give up, I reached the crest, and suddenly a blanket of vermilion appeared, the color made sharper by the olive green grass serpentining through the lowest point of the valley. Beyond that, there was nothing: no roads, no houses, no people. Just buckles of brown mountains, white clouds and the blue, blue sky.

I thought back to that guide’s wise words back in Paracas. This was definitely a landscape you record with your soul.

A golden disk of sun suspended over a hazy landscape of brown earth folded into mountains and dunes.
Sunset over the desert near Huacachina, a place the writer might never have visited if she had crisscrossed Peru by airplane instead of on a bus.

Finding a Way Back to ‘Perfect Beach’

by adminin Writing
THE New York Times
On the spectacular northern coast of Puerto Rico, a writer’s favorite stretch of golden sand beckoned, but getting there legally would take some creativity.
Photographs by Sebastian Castrodad
Photographs by Tali Kimelman
“Perfect Beach,” listed as Punta Caracoles Beach on some maps, near Islote, P.R.

On the northern coast of Puerto Rico — about an hour’s drive west of San Juan, off a wisp of a road threaded through dense green foliage — there exists a long, empty beach that has haunted my dreams for years. On Google Maps, it appears as Punta Caracoles Beach, but I have always thought of it as Perfect Beach.

Hidden from Route 681 by an impenetrable wall of palm trees, sea grapes and snake plants, the half-mile stretch of golden sand near the tiny outpost of Islote is tucked between a graceful bend in the shore and a rocky outcropping. A few houses anchor its far eastern end. The ocean is a visceral blue.

I used to spend hours there, immersing myself in the water, emerging to plop down in the coarse, shelly sand, exhausted, satisfied, letting the sun warm my bare skin.

At least, this is the beach as I remember it. Two decades ago, I had easy access to the place via the summer home of my first husband’s Puerto Rican family. Then we divorced, and later the family sold the land to a fellow from the U.S. mainland. Now, the beach beckons from the other side of a stranger’s private property.

I traveled to Puerto Rico in late May with the singular goal of finding a way back onto that beach (not to be confused with the popular Caracoles Beach, a few miles down the road). I recruited my ex-husband’s cousin Joaquín, a native Puerto Rican who had spent much of his youth on that beach. Together, we set out from San Juan on a sunny Friday afternoon with Perfect Beach — or another stretch of sand that could compare — in our sights.

A turquoise bay surrounded by cliffs on a rocky point of land that juts into the ocean.
A view from the rocky outcropping locals call La Vaca.

Route 681 winds along some of the island’s most spectacular shoreline and, for that reason, is popular with bicyclists and motorcyclists. The road is also lined with restaurants and bars. On the weekends, it’s not uncommon to see party buses making their way along the road.

When we arrived in Islote, dense foliage along the highway complicated our effort to pick out the family’s old lot. But eventually, Joaquín slowed and nosed the car into a dirt driveway that was barricaded by orange netting. A sign in Spanish warned us not to trespass. In Puerto Rico, legally speaking, there are no such thing as private beaches — but you can’t cross private property to reach the sand.

We got back in the car and Joaquín drove slowly, waving a tailgater past. And then I spied a break — a three-foot-wide path running between two fences. “There!” I shouted. “Stop!” and he pulled over on the narrow, grassy shoulder. I jumped out and barreled through the gap, Joaquín trailing me, a soft cooler full of beer dangling from his shoulder.

We emerged on the wrong side of the point locals call La Vaca, or the Cow — a 30-foot-high rocky outcropping that juts into the ocean, at the western end of Perfect Beach. From the east, the slope is gentle, and with proper shoes, you can cross its black spikes, which locals say were formed as the ocean lapped at cooling lava. But from this side, it’s too steep to get a foothold.

We spent a moment enjoying this beach, which was studded with otherworldly round boulders of dead coral, bleached white by the sun. But it was no match for Perfect Beach.

A clear, semicircular pool is mostly surrounded by a sandy beach but on one side faces the blue ocean. A rocky barrier protects the pool from the waves that are crashing against the rocks nearby.
La Poza del Obispo, or the Bishop’s Pool, is a semicircular area protected by a rock formation, creating a calm, clear inlet that is perfect for floating.

Stymied for now, we decided to explore some other local beaches, like La Poza del Obispo (the Bishop’s Pool), reportedly named in honor of a Puerto Rican cleric who had survived a shipwreck.

Because the island’s north shore faces the open Atlantic, the water along it is usually rough. But, at La Poza, a natural rock formation serves as a barrier, creating a small and almost perfectly round inlet with a crystal clear pool that is perfect for floating. The ocean crashing on the rocks lends the water a gentle sway, like being rocked to sleep, and puts on a show, too: When large waves burst on the barrier, sending 20- and 30-foot plumes of spray into the air, bathers ooh, aah and laugh together.

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After La Poza, we headed back east, passing the popular Caza y Pesca (Hunting and Fishing) Beach — so named for the fishermen who once gathered there. As we drove with the windows down, the irresistible smell of a small shore-front restaurant persuaded us to pull over for dinner.

The eatery, called Arrecife 681, was one of the many that had opened up along Route 681 and in the surrounding communities after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Islote is a microcosm of Puerto Rico, whose food scene has blossomed since the devastation of the storm, perhaps as an outgrowth of islanders’ efforts to achieve greater food sovereignty from the mainland.

A beachside table is set with a tray containing a pile of taro chips and a paper bowl of chopped octopus salad with a lemon wedge; a paper box containing a stuffed, fried egg roll on a blue tray; and a tall mojito in a blue-rimmed glass with a strawberry and a flower on top and a red-and-white straw.
Arrecife 681, one of many restaurants that have opened along Route 681 since Hurricane Maria in 2017, offers specialities like, clockwise from top left, taro chips; passion fruit mojitos; beef, plantain and cheese egg rolls; and octopus ceviche.
A translucent green-blue bay in front of a rocky point that slopes down into the water. There is a hole in the point through which you can see the ocean and the horizon.
Cliffs surrounding La Cueva del Indio, a cave famous for its pre-Columbian petroglyphs made by the Taíno, Puerto Rico’s Indigenous people.

We sat on the patio, the beach just a short drop down the dunes, and ordered two appetizers: octopus ceviche, served with taro chips, and egg rolls stuffed with beef, cheese and ripe plantain. The drink menu offered a variety of delicious mojitos — including passion fruit and tamarind.

By the time we got our main dish — green pigeon pea risotto with chicken sausage and sweet plantains topped with pork chunks — we were too full to eat. We leaned back on the bench and picked at the delicious food, groaning with each bite. From the patio, to the east of La Vaca, everything looked exactly as it did from the old beach house: the sunset with that familiar hump protruding into the ocean. The wind was blowing just as it did there, too. We’re so close, I thought.

I’d picked a rustic Airbnb ($100 a night) on the sole basis that it was as close as I could get to the old beach house. Early the next morning, I set out to run, alone, to Perfect Beach. I saw La Vaca on the horizon and, as I recognized Arrecife, the restaurant from the night before, ahead of me, I knew I was almost there. But the shoreline became impossibly rocky, and I had to turn back.

A turquoise bay surrounded by rugged beige cliffs. At the end of the bay, there is a cave that leads into one of the rocks, and above that cave, two people are standing with their hands on their hips, looking at the view.
At La Cueva del Indio, visitors can listen to waves echo off the rocks, take in stunning views of the water, and watch birds soar, dive and swoop.

After my run, we headed to La Cueva del Indio, right next door to my Airbnb. The cave, famous for its pre-Columbian petroglyphs made by the Taíno, the island’s Indigenous people, is surrounded by soaring cliffs that offer a stunning view of the cobalt water below. We sat on the edge of a cliff, listening to the waves echo off the rocks, watching swallow-tailed birds soar, dive and swoop.

Back on the road, I spied a tiny, black food truck with a flat tire. The sign was simple: La Herencia. Again, my nose implored us to stop, and the results were piping-hot pastelillos, fried turnovers with a small ball of filling, the dough extending out so far and so flat that they reminded me of angel wings. We tried the shrimp and a garlicky tomato filling that was surprisingly but pleasantly sweet. Joaquín tried an unusual pairing: an octopus-filled pastelillo and banana peppers. Breaking off big chunks of the edges, we declared the crispy dough the best we’d ever had. (La Herencia is currently closed but its owners aim to reopen soon.)

From there, I could see La Vaca. And again, we were on the correct side to make it to Perfect Beach. After finishing our pastelillos, we tried to walk there, but again, it was too rocky, and we returned to the car, defeated.

Then it hit me: “Arrecife — the restaurant!” I said. “Let’s park there, grab drinks and then drop down off the patio onto the beach.”

When we arrived at Arrecife, I headed straight to the bar, where I ordered a drink to go. I chose the Lilin: vodka, Prosecco, St-Germain elderflower liqueur and passion fruit liqueur, topped off with passion fruit juice.

Plastic cup in hand, I made a beeline for the corner of the patio as Joaquín asked if it was OK to go down to the beach from the restaurant. “Of course,” an employee with the official air of a manager responded, and Joaquín followed.

A sandy beach covered with bits of wood and leaves and framed by leafy trees and plants. Beyond the beach, the wide, blue ocean extends all the way to the horizon
“Perfect Beach,” which lies on the other side of a strip of private land, can be reached with a little creativity — and some help from a nearby restaurant.

After a short walk, we passed the last house anchoring the eastern tip of the beach. And then a familiar feeling came over me: The place was exactly as I remembered it. We were alone as far as the eye could see. I peeled off my clothes and raced to the water.

The ocean floor fell away steeply just a few steps in. I ducked under the huge waves rolling toward me and swam out beyond the breakers. I flipped onto my back, letting my body rise. Cradled by warm saltwater, I looked toward the shore and saw nothing but palm trees and sea grapes. The outside world no longer existed. There was only this beach, this moment, and it was perfect — exactly as it had remained, all these years, in my dreams.

Most of the accommodations in the area of Islote and along Route 681 mirror the beaches: rustic. Airbnbs are a good option.

Where to stay:

  • Salitre Meson Costero, an upscale seafood restaurant on the water near Punta Caracoles, offers a beachside villa — great for groups — with a stunning view and a private pool ($1,395 a night for a 10-room, seven-and-a-half-bath villa that can accommodate 16 guests, on Airbnb).
  • The high-end Nest Puerto Rico, also good for groups, has options near Caza y Pesca Beach ($500 a night for a four-bedroom villa that can accommodate 10) and oceanside in Arecibo (also $500 a night for a four-bedroom villa that can house up to 10).
  • Greta Beach Box, in Islote, is a shipping container, just steps from the beach, that has been converted into a luxurious cabin with a private, heated pool ($151 a night for two rooms that can sleep four guests).
  • DK Backyard, another converted shipping container on Airbnb, offers a simple space (with a hammock on the porch) and is just a short walk from the beach in Islote ($174 a night for one bedroom with a double bed).

Where to eat:

  • David Sandwich, along Route 681 has been an Islote institution for decades, serving up tasty roasted-pork sandwiches and more ($4 to $9).
  • El Nuevo Guayabo, another Islote mainstay along Route 681, offers empanadas stuffed with cetí, a tiny immature fish found in the Arecibo area ($5).
  • Bocata Smokehouse, a delicious barbecue joint, features ocean breezes and views and occasional live music (entrees $9 to $28).
  • La Distillera, one of the places that have sprung up since Hurricane Maria, offers small plates that meld traditional ingredients with whimsical touches — like pastry pockets stuffed with short rib and Manchego and served with mango chimichurri. The innovative drinks are phenomenal: For example, the Olivia is made of olive-oil-infused gin, Licor 43 (a sweet liqueur from Spain), lime and honey syrup. (The menu changes weekly. Food from about $12 to $20; cocktails $8 to $12.)
  • DPicar681, a food truck, serves delightful cod fritters ($2) — thin and crisp but chewy, with a distinctive oregano flavor.
  • El Kiosquito del Norte, a roadside stand, tempts travelers and locals with freshly made stuffed crab fritters and moist, flavorful plantain rolls filled with ground beef ($3.50).

I’m Israeli, my ex-husband is Palestinian – and our union has never been stronger

by adminin Featured Articles, Writing
THE GAURDIAN
At this moment, no one understands our pain better than one another. My ex-husband and I are both clinging to what’s most familiar: the two of us, our kids, our family.

It’s a Monday afternoon – just two weeks since 7 October – and I’m floating somewhere outside myself as I teach my weekly multimedia class at the university. I hear myself cracking jokes and responding to students’ questions. I feel myself smiling. But when I look down at my arms and hands as I pack up at the end of class, I don’t recognize my own body. There’s that familiar golden peachy tone, that skin that took Tel Aviv’s sun so many years ago, and carried it back with me to the US. And yet, I can’t quite place these particular arms and hands.

But the phone, the phone is familiar. After I wave my last student goodbye, I pull it from my purse and read the latest messages. My ex-boyfriend in Tel Aviv – an Israeli vegan, anti-Zionist pacifist – tells me he’s now looking for a stun gun for self-protection. Another friend, a photojournalist who lives in the north, not far from where Israel has been exchanging fire with Hezbollah, is searching for a bullet proof vest. He’s driving around with an axe in the back of his car, he adds, punctuating the sentence with the laugh-till-you-cry emoji. I send messages to my distant cousin in Pardes Hanna, a laidback town between Tel Aviv and Haifa, asking about her and her family, and to one of my closest friends, who lives in Eilat – a city that will soon be under rocket fire from Yemen. All over the country, my loved ones are terrified.

Tears start to fall down my cheeks, my eyes leaking uncontrollably again, as they have for weeks now.

Then I check the news and I see that the country I lived in for almost a decade, the place where I became the adult I am today, the state I’m a citizen of, is pummeling Palestinians in Gaza, and thousands of civilians are dying.

I am Israeli. My ex-husband and our two children are Palestinian.

The evening of 7 October was the last time I managed to go grocery shopping; since then, Mohamed – my Palestinian ex-husband – has been haphazardly picking up just enough food for us to keep feeding our two children, aged seven and six.

Not only did Mohammed take up grocery shopping without any discussion, but he is living with us again now, despite the fact that we’re divorced.

Since the fall of 2022, Mohamed and I have been trying to follow a custody arrangement sometimes referred to as “bird nesting”, in which the children stay in one place and the parents rotate in and out – keeping the children under one roof at all times but ensuring that the parents never are.

We have all but remarried

The small home I share with our children, our dog and our cat has served as the nest or home base; prior to 7 October, Mohamed lived, most of the time, with his brother, coming and staying with the kids when I was out of town for work or in the rare event that I was gone for leisure. Our parting was, for the most part, amicable, and there was the occasional family dinner and sleepover. But in the end, he always went back to his brother’s.

Since the war began, however, we have all but remarried. At this moment, no one understands our pain better than one another. In the midst of our shared grief, we both reach for and cling to the thing that is most familiar – the two of us, our kids, our family.

On 6 October, I was wrapping up a work trip to the Seattle area. Anxious to get home to my children and worried I’d somehow miss my flight, I woke in the middle of the night. When I picked up the phone to check the time, I saw a notification from my ex-boyfriend, who has remained one of my closest friends.

“In case you wondered,” he wrote in Hebrew, “I’m OK.”

Oh God.

I knew to check the news. I couldn’t believe what I saw.

After arriving at Seattle’s airport at 6am, I called Mohamed, who had just woken up.

“Did you see what happened back home?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s gonna get bad.”

“Get bad?” I bristled. “It’s already horrible.” Terrifyingscenes flashed through my head: people hiding in their homes, sending frantic WhatsApp messages to loved ones – “I hear shooting” – and the heartbreaking goodbyes rendered over text – “I love you.”

But I knew what Mohamed meant: it was going to get bad for the Palestinians. I told him he was right because I, too, feared Israel’s response. The brutality of the Hamas attack, I knew, would give the Israeli government carte blanche, a sense of absolute immunity to do whatever the hell they wanted to Gaza. And, certainly, we’d see some sort of crackdown in the West Bank, as well as violent acts of revenge.

Whatever happened, I knew, it was going to be a disaster for both sides. A selfish thought ran through my head: we’re never going to go home again.

Mohamed’s family lives in Ramallah, which is where Mohamed and I first met. It was 2011, and I was visiting to report a story about the Palestinian Authority’s bid for an upgrade of its status at the UN. He was a journalist; my Arabic was weak and I needed a translator. A friend connected us, and we felt the sparks right away. I was living in Tel Aviv then, but by the time we started dating in 2013, I’d moved to Jerusalem and was teaching at a Palestinian university in the West Bank.

Despite the fact that my professional work and personal life was increasingly rooted among the Palestinians, our courtship was fraught. Mohamed’s father had been a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Israelis had arrested, tortured and deported him from the West Bank to Jordan in the late 1970s; the family had only been able to return from their forced exile in 1997, several years after the Oslo Accords had been signed.

When Mohamed told his father that he intended to marry not just a Jewish woman but one who held Israeli citizenship, his father rejected the match. Unable to live in the family home together in the West Bank and unable to live together legally inside of Israel, we left in 2014 and came to Florida, where we married and had our two children.

The last time we were back as a family was in late 2016, when our daughter was nine months old. We were unable to enter together as a family. For the first time since she was born, my daughter spent a day away from me as she and Mohamed traveled through the only crossing Mohamed can use as a Palestinian, Allenby Bridge, which just so happens to be one of the only crossings I can’t use as an Israeli. We reunited in Ramallah, where Mohamed registered our daughter as a Palestinian.

Today, our situation, which was already complicated, seems impossibly so.

Wanting to bring a sense of normalcy to our home on this side of the ocean, I picked up some groceries on my way back from the airport: fixings for tacos, quesadillas and guacamole. That would be the last time I would manage to go to the store for over two weeks.

That night, Mohamed and I made dinner together as the kids watched a movie; we sat down as a family to eat. Afterwards, there was no talk about him leaving. In the morning, we agreed we wanted to give the kids a sense of calm and normalcy, so we decided to take them to the beach.

On the way there, Mohamed and I had a conversation in code, with me relying on what little Arabic I’ve retained in the nine years since we left the West Bank. I told him that what happened on 7 October wasn’t muqawamah, resistance. It’s a crime. And if it’s considered muqawamah well, then, I guess I don’t support resistance. Fine, don’t call me a leftist any more. I don’t care.

Yes, I’m an Israeli citizen but Palestine is part of them, part of us, part of me

In the front seat, I babble incoherently but quietly in my strange mix of English, Arabic and Hebrew – the latter of which Mohamed doesn’t fully understand – until our daughter asks from the back: “What’s going on?”

She’s seven. She’s smart. She’s just finished reading the entire Harry Potter series.

“There’s a war in Israel,” I say.

“Oh,” she says. “Who are they fighting?”

There’s a pause. I can’t be the one, I can’t say it, because I don’t want her to think I hate them, the “them” who are half of her – the them who, I feel, are also part of me. My children are Palestinian; I carried them in my womb. During pregnancy, something called cell migration takes place, the baby’s DNA crossing into the mother’s bloodstream and organs, where it “can persist for decades”, scientists say.

Yes, I’m an Israeli citizen but Palestine is part of them, part of us, part of me.

I don’t have the heart to tell Farah who the Israelis are fighting. Instead, I say nothing and I turn and look at Mohamed, waiting for him to answer.

“Ya baba,” he began, glancing in the rearview mirror. Baba means Dad in Arabic and parents address their children like this – Mohamed calls the kids “Baba” and mothers call their children “Mama”.

He hesitated.

“Mohamed,” I prodded.

He’d already told me he wanted to shelter them as much as possible from what is happening, but we can’t not tell them that there’s a war. Details, they don’t need. But the broad outline, they have to know.

Finally, he tells our daughter: “Ya baba, the Palestinians.”

I’m relieved she doesn’t ask another question.

But I do in the days that follow. I have so many questions and I ask Mohamed things I’m ashamed to admit now. I ask him if he supports Hamas’s “operation” on 7 October, the massacre. I ask him if he thinks this helps the Palestinian cause. I ask him if his family in the West Bank – the blood relations of my own children – handed out candy to celebrate the horrible, brutal deaths of Jewish people, my people.

These questions are racist and unfair and I’m disgusted by them, by myself for asking them. I admit as much and I apologize. Mohamed is compassionate. “You’re human,” he says. “You’re upset.”

And I’m upset as my Facebook feed fills with people sharing the pictures of the missing and dead from the nature party and the kibbutzim next to Gaza. I sit and read it all aloud to Mohamed, translating the Hebrew to English and imploring him: “Look at the pictures. Look at the people.”

He takes a seat on the couch next to me, pats my back – a gesture our son has learned from him – and holds my hand.

And I try to be there for Mohamed, too, in his grief, as he mourns the loss of Palestinian life. I put a hand on his shoulder as he sits, reading the news on his phone. I hug him when he has no words but his face tells me how sad he is.

Is it strange that in these days, the darkest we’ve experienced in the decade we’ve been together, we’re closer than ever?

For the foreseeable future, I can’t imagine this changing. There’s no small irony here: at a time when our people are battling the fiercest since 1948, we are completely united. We’re opposed to people dying. Period. It really is that simple.

Setting the lofty, political symbol of our union aside, with two kids, there’s day-to-day life to manage. The fridge has gotten a little too bare and it’s time for me to pick up some food. On Sunday, I sat down and did something I have never managed to do in all my years as a working mother: I made a meal plan for the entire week. It’s bizarrely sumptuous. Those who died on 7 October will never enjoy a meal like this again and now, in Gaza, people are dying in droves. Others are facing food and water shortages. Shame flickers inside of me. I’m ashamed of this grocery list and the meals I’m going to make.

Mohamed is keeping me – us – together despite the fact that we tried to part

Inside Whole Foods, my phone still in my hand, I do a lap in the produce section. And then another. I have a list but I can’t pay attention to the words. I put a red bell pepper in the wagon, a few avocados. My phone pings and I talk to my ex-boyfriend in Tel Aviv and then I look at the international journalist WhatsApp group that I’m on, that’s getting terrifying, with heartbreaking reports from Gaza. I look up, dazed, and remember I’m in a grocery store.

There was something Mohamed wanted me to get. What was it? I call him. “I’m at Whole Foods. What was it you wanted me to get?”

“Chicken,” he answers.

“Chicken, chicken, chicken,” I chant as I make another loop in the produce department.

A few minutes later, I can’t remember what it is, exactly, that Mohamed wants me to get.

So I call again.

Finally, I leave the store. I load the paper bags into the car and begin to drive away. I call Mohamed, who doesn’t even sigh when he answers, as he would have before 7 October.

“Aiwa, ya Mya?” he answers. “Yes?”

“What did I forget?” I ask him, as though he is there with me, as though he can read my mind.

“I don’t know. The chicken?”

“Fuck. The chicken.”

In a normal time, this would be funny. Or annoying. But today, it makes me cry. I am crying because I realize that I’m unraveling, and because our home over there is unraveling. I’m crying with gratitude that Mohamed is keeping me – us – together despite the fact that we tried to part.

“Who’s picking up the kids today?” I ask through tears. I know we have had this conversation half a dozen times today already.

“You are?” his voice, patient as ever.

“Yes, but who’s taking them to what?”

He reminds me of our plans and so I race to the children’s school, pick them up, drop our daughter at dance, drive our son to the nearby basketball court, where Mohamed meets us. I head to another grocery store, this time with the word chicken scrawled in ink on my disembodied hand.

I don’t know what the future holds for us as a couple. I know that we have two kids to take care of – two children who share both of our blood, and whose hopes and dreams and futures we are equally concerned about regardless of how the world defines them and regardless of how they might eventually define themselves.

Israeli. Palestinian. Both. Neither. At this point, it doesn’t really matter to us. We want them to be safe and happy, healthy and productive.

As for the two of us, we have tried to separate but can’t manage to part. The analogy isn’t lost on me. But the tragedy I circle around – one I’ve been obsessing about for years now – is that in order for us to exist together, in peace, we had no choice but to leave the land that we both love dearly, the place where we met, the land on which we fell in love.

That we can exist in peace together is a beautiful thing. But what does it mean that we can only exist in peace together outside the land we would like to share?

Who Gets to Wear G-Strings Now?

by adminin Featured Articles, Writing
THE New York Times
More women are adopting the “less is more” philosophy.

Codi Maher noticed that bikini bottoms were shrinking a few years ago. “First it was cheeky cut, then Brazilian,” said Ms. Maher, a 30-year-old real estate agent in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. As the fabric covering women’s derrières disappeared, she started thinking about getting a thong swimsuit of her own: “I was just like, everyone’s wearing them, screw it, I don’t care.”

Her sister, Cassidy, 24, said she started wearing thong bikinis a year or two ago because she believed the cut made her “butt look a little better.” She also likes the lack of tan lines, a sentiment repeated by numerous women. “Sometimes I feel uncomfortable,” Cassidy said. “But I’m starting to feel more confident seeing other women wearing them.”

Some attribute the latest surge of G-strings and thongs to celebrities who wear the swimwear style, including Emily Ratajkowski, Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kate Hudson. “The thongkini is Hollywood’s swimsuit of choice,” Popsugar declared. “Anticipate lots of thong, string and cheeky cuts,” Rolling Stone wrote.

Though the terms are often used interchangeably, G-strings and thongs are different. G-strings have a thin strap running between the buttocks, connected to the waistband. A thong, while still offering the T-back look, has a triangle of fabric at the top, covering the space between the buttocks and the lower back. Another category called Brazilian bottoms offers more coverage than thongs; these are skimpy and high-cut, elongating the leg and exposing most of the buttocks. But all of these variations point to one thing: Skin is in.

Major retailers, including Victoria’s Secret and Billabong, are offering G-string and thong swimsuits as part of their 2023 swimwear collections.

While the thong has ancient origins — and iterations of the garment have popped up around the globe — the style first appeared in public in the United States in 1939 ahead of the New York World’s Fair, after the city’s mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, mandated that showgirls perform covered rather than completely naked (as was both common and contentious at fairs in this period). The 1939 mandate was part of the mayor’s larger war against displays of “filth and lewdness”: In 1937, Mr. La Guardia backed a citywide ban on 14 burlesque theaters that led to police closures of such striptease clubs for the first time in the city’s history. The ban was contested and quickly made its way to the New York Supreme Court, where lawyers for the burlesque clubs tried unsuccessfully to force the city to reissue their licenses.

Decades later, on the West Coast, another legal strike against displays of flesh spurred swimwear innovation: In 1974, when the Los Angeles City Council banned public nudity, the Austrian American designer Rudi Gernreich responded by inventing the thong bikini.

“The thong is my response to a contradiction in our society: Nudity is here; lots of people want to swim and sun themselves in the nude; also lots of people are still offended by public nudity,” Mr. Gernreich said in a manifesto in the 1970s, citing, according to Vogue, “Brazilian swimwear, sumo wrestlers’ mawashis and thong sandals as references” for the style.

The same conflict Mr. Gernreich identified would eventually propel the G-string all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court ruled on G-strings in the case of Barnes v. Glen Theatre Inc. in 1991 and in City of Erie v. Pap’s A.M. in 2000. In both cases, exotic dancers who wanted to completely strip down argued that laws requiring them to wear G-strings infringed on their First Amendment rights. But the justices upheld the legislative requirements, in rulings that are “widely derided as failures in terms of First Amendment reasoning,” according to Amy Adler, a law professor at New York University.

The court deemed female nudity a threat to social order and upheld the G-string as a “solution to crime, disease and mayhem,” Ms. Adler said. The garment is all about dualities — a thing of “fantasy and dread,” she said, at once pointing to and hiding a woman’s sexuality.

In recent years, a number of North Carolina municipalities have loosened restrictions and enforcement of nudity laws to accommodate an increase in scantily clad beachgoers. (Thus far, municipalities in South Carolina have declined to follow suit, despite calls to get rid of the thong law.)

For now, the legal wrangling over thongkinis seems confined to the Carolinas. Thong bikinis are legal in most parts of the United States, but laws vary by city and county. In Florida, for example, thong swimwear is prohibited in state parks, including some portions of the state’s beaches.

Regardless of the legality, many women say the cut helps them make peace with their bodies. In the past, skimpy swimwear was often considered the province of women with conventionally “perfect” bodies, but today, G-string, thong and other barely there bottoms are embraced by women of all shapes and sizes.

Nikki Sutton, a paralegal from Atlanta with two kids, explained that she ordered a white thong bikini ahead of a trip to Puerto Rico because she wanted to “feel sexy for a second.” Though she had recently gained 15 pounds, she said, she decided to rock the thong anyway because it would push her outside her comfort zone and force her to be “completely content” with her body exactly as it was, “with every piece of what I have going on — inches, weight, the whole thing.”

“That’s what a thong does to me,” she said. “It’s empowering and it forces me to feel a little more comfortable in my skin. I have to walk with a certain level of confidence, whether I feel that way or not.”

Ms. Sutton said she hoped that her flaunting what she sees as her imperfect body in public would encourage other women to be comfortable in their own bodies, no matter their shapes or sizes.

Wearing a G-string is “liberating,” said Laura DiBiase, a 32-year-old college counselor from Los Angeles, because it symbolizes “taking ownership of your body.” Ms. DiBiase said her adoption of the style was tied to her personal fitness journey: As she started hitting the gym more, she became more confident and started wearing G-string bikinis, which in turn enhanced her confidence.

But some see the style as a double-edged sword.

“There are certain bodies that are just marginalized — fat bodies, older bodies, bodies with visible disabilities,” said Celine Leboeuf, an assistant professor of philosophy at Florida International University. “There can be something liberating about claiming those clothes that people say you shouldn’t be wearing because of your body. But then you fall onto the other edge of self-objectification.”

Mari Heredia, a 49-year-old medical technician from Boynton Beach, Fla., said she wears a thong swimsuit because “I need to tan my booty.”

The last time she wore one, she added, was 20 years ago, on holiday in Cancún. Reflecting on her body today, she said: “I’m fat, but guess what? I have two kids. This is my natural body.”

Five women wearing bikini tops and thong, G-string or Brazilian bottoms pose on a beach, smiling and raising their arms.

Today, G-string, thong and other barely there bottoms are embraced by women of all shapes and sizes.
(Photo: Melody Timothee for The New York Times)

Why Did I Spend My Last Birthday Alone in Alaska? Ask My Astrologer.

by adminin Writing
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Some people believe that where you are during your “solar return,” an annual event linked to the sun, can change your destiny. For one writer, it was worth a try.

I’m deep in an Alaskan forest halfway through an 8K race when I find myself alone. Above me, 100-foot spruces bend and bellow, set upon by wind so loud I mistake it for an airplane. Below me, a slushy, icy mess of a trail.

Ahead of me — no one.

It’s a drizzly November morning. My clothes are wet with rain and my fingers and toes hurt from the cold. I look down at my black running shoes, willing them to move faster. They don’t.

I can no longer see the two women I followed for the first half of the run, and I imagine the gap widening. Then I picture myself on a map: a speck some 4,000 miles away from my home in South Florida. I see my 7-year-old daughter’s chubby cheeks and dirty blond curls, my 5-year-old son with his thumb in his mouth.

“I’m going to die here, alone,” I think. In the past, I never had thoughts like this. I was all swagger: Back when I lived in Jerusalem, I ran on isolated trails in the forest almost every afternoon. But since filing for divorce in August, I’ve become fearful of being alone. And being in Alaska — with its vastness, the way it dangles, lonely, at the edge of the continent — has only magnified those feelings.

I try to catch up with the women, but I’m tapped out, No. 12 in a field of a dozen. I worry: What if everyone finishes and goes home? I don’t have my phone; there will be no way for me to call for help.

And then I ask myself: Why did I come all the way to Alaska on the advice of a total stranger, to chase something I’m not even sure I believe in — an astrological event called a solar return?

Tilting the stars in your favor

A solar return takes place at the moment when the sun returns to exactly the same location in the sky where it was at the time of your birth, explained Julia Mihas, a San Francisco-based astrologer. This usually takes place every year on or near your birthday.

The thinking behind solar return trips is that just as the place where you’re born has an impact on your birth chart — which supposedly reveals major themes in your life story — so can the place where you spend your solar return affect the year ahead. In essence, an astrologer, using your yearly chart, searches for the place where the stars will be most auspicious at the moment of your solar return, and then you travel to that location. It’s like hacking your horoscope.

These trips, known as aimed solar returns, or A.S.R.s, are central to an approach called active astrology, which holds that you can intervene in your fate.

Let me confess that I’m a little woo-woo. I recently bought a small piece of Libyan desert glass — which is supposed to work with chakras or vibrations or whatever — and hung it over my desk. But solar return trips — which I’d heard about from a friend — seemed out there; I considered one only after my marriage fell apart. That friend connected me to Katia Novikova, a Ukrainian astrologer who lives in Rome.

When Ms. Novikova, a pianist by training, took up astrology in 1995, she immediately began searching for a way to exercise control over the stars. A few years later, she discovered active astrology. Ms. Novikova’s first foray into solar return trips came in 2011, after she did her chart for the year ahead and foresaw her own death. She recalled with a laugh how she used a combination of software and her extensive knowledge of astrology to find a solar return destination — Barcelona — where her stars offered a better outcome: “Instead of dying, I changed it for health, for art and for money. It was simple.”

The trip was also easy — an inexpensive flight from Rome.

Upon returning, Ms. Novikova landed a regular gig as a pianist, and requests for private lessons poured in as well.

So not only did Ms. Novikova continue doing A.S.R.s, she also offered free readings to friends. When word spread and strangers began inquiring about readings, Ms. Novikova started charging.

One of those strangers who found Ms. Novikova is the television writer Safia M. Dirie, who asked not to give her age.

On Ms. Novikova’s advice, Ms. Dirie, who lives in Los Angeles, made her first solar return trip in 2016 to the Cook Islands, a small South Pacific nation, looking to change her luck in love. Less than a year later, she met the man who is now her husband.

The next year, Ms. Novikova sent Ms. Dirie to a tiny town called Swink, population 667, on the southeastern plains of Colorado. Because there were no hotels in Swink and her solar return was taking place in the middle of the night, Ms. Dirie and a friend white-knuckled it from Colorado Springs, a couple of hours away. In the dark, amid a tornado warning, tumbleweeds kept rolling out in front of the car and she kept slamming on the brakes, thinking they were deer.

When Ms. Dirie and her friend arrived in Swink, they found it pitch black, the power knocked out by the storm. They parked in front of a random house until her 2:08 a.m. solar return passed. Then the two “went over to the next town and got a piece of pie at an all-night diner.”

Ms. Dirie, who likened her own solar return trips to pilgrimages, said that A.S.R.s are “pretty popular” in her Los Angeles circle, but solar return trips aren’t a national travel trend, according to the half-dozen travel advisers I spoke with.

Like a travel adviser, Ms. Novikova tries to understand what motivates a client. After I contacted her via email — just a month after I’d filed for divorce — and paid 100 euros, about $110, she had me answer questions about my hopes for the coming year. Then she did her magic and we got on a Whatsapp video chat to discuss the results.

Ms. Novikova started with the chart for my previous birthday. “Miserable,” she said. It was all there — the rise in expenses, the unwanted move to a cramped apartment, the endless arguments with my husband.

My forecast for 2023 would be best, Ms. Novikova said, if I went to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, at 5:12 a.m. local time on Nov. 13. I Googled the place: Beautiful but remote; the logistics were daunting.

Second: Juneau, Alaska. My stomach turned. Far away. Cold. A dark, foreboding landscape that could swallow me up. There’s the Alaska triangle, a vast area of wilderness bounded by the cities of Juneau, Anchorage and Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), where many people have gone missing. The state is also surprisingly dangerous, with one of the highest violent crime rates in the country.

No, thanks.

Third place: Brazil. Yes! Sun, beaches, great food. But Ms. Novikova frowned. “There are some things I don’t like in this horoscope,” she said. And that was that.

We settled on Juneau, and Ms. Novikova gave me a detailed forecast for the year based on that destination. Not only would I look good physically, I’d have more professional visibility. I’d have luck selling my new book. Ms. Novikova said she saw an editor and a university.

Oh, and love. A dream job, too.

Because it was the off-season in Alaska, I found a round-trip ticket from Palm Beach to Juneau for under $500 and a reasonable rate — $100 a night — for a room at the historic Alaskan Hotel, which is reportedly haunted. If I’m dabbling in the woo-woo, I figured, I might as well go all out.

Then I looked for a run, a great way to get a workout and a different view of a place from that of most tourists. I was in luck — the Juneau Trail and Road Runners’ Veterans Day 8K would take place the day before my solar return.

Arriving in downtown Juneau a few days early, I worked remotely and explored what little was open in the off-season. At the Rookery Cafe, I enjoyed spiced avocado toast, and at the Alaska Native-owned Sacred Grounds Café, I had a delicious but stomachache-inducing reindeer sausage. I found excellent beer and phenomenal charred carrot hummus at Devil’s Club Brewing Company. And Amalga Distillery offered spruce tip gin and a smooth, sippable whiskey.

I settled into a routine — working, running, eating — and two days in, I didn’t need Google maps anymore.

On the day of the race, I took a bus to a parking lot 10 miles outside town. As a small group of runners gathered, I asked two women if they minded me tagging along. But they were younger, leaner and fitter and they were dressed appropriately — one had snow grips attached to her shoes — and I lost the women midway through the run.

Alone in the woods, despairing, I heard someone push through the trees and step onto the trail. Before me was a man I didn’t recognize. He was dressed like a runner, but I didn’t see the yellow bib all the racers wore. He fell into step beside me, explaining that he had stopped to go to the bathroom and decided to wait for me.

Before, I was scared to be out here alone; now, I was frightened by this stranger’s sudden appearance. Trying to push my fear aside, I made small talk. We arrived at a fork in the snowy trail and, because the race was so informal, not all of the course was marked. Both directions were equally covered with slushy footprints and, without anything or anyone to guide us, we puzzled over which way to go.

“Right,” he said.

“Are you sure?” I asked, worried that he was trying to lead me deeper into the woods.

But separating would have been equally dangerous, so I followed him. And then, suddenly, we were on the shoulder of Glacier Highway, and I was striding toward the finish line as best as I could with numb toes.

“There they are!” exclaimed the other runners; they cheered us on as the man and I pushed to the end. Not only had they not forgotten about me, they were waiting. A single thought spooled through my head — I am not alone in this world — and I choked back tears of gratitude.

That night, at 4 a.m., I woke up — sans alarm — just a few minutes ahead of my solar return. Lying there in the dark, I listened for, then heard, the raven’s call, which I’d grown to love while in Juneau. I looked at the phone again, and the time had passed. My solar return was over.

After returning to Florida, I framed and hung the yellow race bib on the wall as a talisman, like the Libyan desert stone I’d bought before the trip, as a reminder of how far I’d traveled and how far I’d come. And three weeks later, just like that, my divorce was final. I had faced my fear of being alone.

Oh, and a couple of months after that, an editor — from a university press — made me an offer for my book.

Israelis Fear Their Democracy Is Crumbling — and the U.S. Isn’t Coming to Help

by adminin Featured Articles, Writing
Politico
Out on the street with 130,000 protesters.
Ohad Zwigenberg / AP Photo

As Shabbat comes to a close and Tel Aviv stirs back to life, protesters begin to gather on HaBima Square. At a nearby cafe, I sit among a small group of Israelis who wonder aloud about this fraught moment for the country… and we decide to join the crowd.

Democracy in Israel may face dire threats, but a festive atmosphere prevails during this Saturday night march, which quickly fills Kaplan Street, a major thoroughfare in the heart of the city. People smile and snap selfies; they bang on drums and toot kazoos — sounding out the rhythm of Ha’am doresh tzedek chevrati! (“The people demand social justice!”). A Palestinian citizen of the state weaves a cart through the crowd calling “Bageleh, bageleh!” offering the Israeli version of a bagel (which is nothing like a bagel at all) with za’atar held in small sacks of twisted newspaper.

On an island in the middle of a thoroughfare, which has been blocked off to traffic by police, stands a family of five. They hold a sign that says, in Hebrew, “Worried about our children’s future.” The woman — tall, thin, with straight blonde hair — wears her sleeping one-month old in a cloth sling tied tight to her chest. A restless five-year-old boy whining “Ima,” mama, clambers about on a stroller, his seven-and-a-half-year-old sister admonishing him to be quiet. The couple, who identify themselves only as Avi and Hila, say it’s hard to get out of the house with a newborn and two young children, but they’re here anyway because they feel that the country they know is at risk — “We’re going to lose our democracy,” Avi says.

Some 130,000 demonstrators swarmed the streets that night last month to rally against the country’s new far-right government — arguably the most extreme in Israel’s history — and an agenda that even centrist politicians say threatens Israel’s democracy. The protest wasn’t a one-off. Pro-democracy demonstrations have taken place every Saturday since the start of January, bringing in some of the largest crowds in recent memory (though smaller than the 2011 social justice protests that, at their height, brought approximately a quarter million people to the streets).

The new government is led by a familiar face, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been in and out of office since 1996 and is still on trial for corruption charges.

But the coalition he cobbled together to regain power includes elements that once composed the fringe of Israeli politics. That includes Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right religious nationalist who heads a political party named “Jewish Power.” Previously, he was a member of Kach, a party that was outlawed in Israel and that spent 25 years on the U.S. State Department’s list of terror organizations; in a twist of irony, Ben Gvir is now serving as the country’s national security minister. Since taking the helm, he has visited the Al Aqsa compound in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, home to the third holiest site in Islam. Al Aqsa is sacred to Jews as well, but such visits are viewed by Palestinians as a huge provocation — an act so contentious that Ariel Sharon’s September 2000 visit is widely credited with sparking the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising.

Another controversial figure in the new government is Bezalel Smotrich, a settler and the leader of an ultra-nationalist religious Zionist party. Smotrich is now serving as a finance minister; it is widely believed that, in this role, he will ensure West Bank settlements get the money they need to continue to grow, threatening what little possibility remains of a territorially contiguous Palestinian state.

Already, this new government is making moves to chip away at the country’s democratic space. A proposed overhaul to the judiciary would render the High Court’s judgments toothless and would destroy its independence, upending the country’s system of checks and balances. The government also announced an intent to shut down Kan — the country’s only publicly funded broadcast news service — with Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi “calling public broadcasting unnecessary.” Outrage was so intense that it’s been put on ice for now as the government focuses instead on pushing through its controversial judicial reforms. Netanyahu defends the reshuffling of the judiciary, dismissively calling them a “minor correction.”

But even Israel’s own president, Isaac Herzog, is sounding the alarm. In a speech given on Sunday — the day before a massive nationwide strike that brought 100,000 Israelis to protest outside of the Knesset on Monday — Herzog warned that the country is “on the brink of constitutional and social collapse.”

“I feel, we all feel, that we are in the moment before a clash, even a violent clash,” Herzog said. “The gunpowder barrel is about to explode.”

When I wade into the crowd on that Saturday night, just after Shabbat has ended, there’s another consistent fear I hear from Israelis: that this new government will undermine its standing in the world, including with its most important ally, the United States. But while there are fears about losing American support, some Israelis also voice concern that American backing will continue regardless of what this new government does — a scenario they view as enabling and dangerous. Because what would an Israel — held accountable to no one, left entirely to its own devices — look like?

Avi, who works in high-tech, a key Israeli industry, says he is particularly worried about the government targeting the rights of secular Israelis, women and LGBTQ individuals — which could also prove to open rifts between America’s Democratic Party and the Israeli government. (Just a few days later, hundreds of Israeli high-tech employees would take to the streets, leaving their desks abruptly at midday to march on Rothschild Boulevard as they carried signs that read, “No democracy, no high-tech.”)

Asked if Israel’s relationship with the United States is a concern, Hila replies, “It’s always a concern. We’re supposed to be the only democracy in the Middle East and that doesn’t seem like where we’re going with the latest changes.”

Maya Lavie-Ajayi, a 48-year-old professor at Ben Gurion University, says she hopes to see some sort of intervention from the Biden administration and the European Union. “We see Hungary and we see Russia and we know you get to a point where [citizens] can’t fight back anymore.” She added that while Israel isn’t there yet, “I think that we need support to keep the democratic nature that was problematic in the first place.”

Lavie-Ajayi notes the withdrawal of American support would be a powerful lesson to Netanyahu: “Bibi would understand that he can’t just do whatever he wants, that he doesn’t have an open ticket to chip away at the democratic nature of this country.”

It’s not just people in the streets who see the prospect of pressure from abroad. In December, over 100 former Israeli diplomats and retired foreign ministry officials sent an open letter to Netanyahu expressing concern about the new government’s impact on the country’s international standing, warning that there could be “political and economic ramifications.”

Indeed, senior American officials seem to share at least some of protesters’ worries about the direction Israel is taking. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited Israel last month reportedly in hopes of “syncing up” with the new government. Then came Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip, during which he said he had a “candid” talk with Netanyahu, with Blinken touting the need for a two-state solution with Palestinians and the importance of democratic institutions.

Still, it seems unlikely Israel will lose American support — including billions in military aid — anytime soon.

“This administration will go to great lengths to avoid a public confrontation with the new Netanyahu government,” says Aaron David Miller, a longtime State Department official who worked on Middle East negotiations and is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

At the same time, Israel’s shifting politics — particularly with a government that’s now more religious right than secular right — could have unintended reverberations. It’s taken for granted that American liberals are likely to grow ever more skittish with an ultra-conservative Israel. But some in conservative corners are also worried, according to Yossi Shain, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University, professor emeritus at Georgetown University and former Knesset Member from Yisrael Beiteinu, a secular nationalist party on the right. He says he’s constantly on the phone with American counterparts who are deeply concerned about how the new government will impact the country’s security and economy.

“The Israeli right pretends to reflect American conservative values, but in fact distorts them,” he adds. “It builds on clericalism and religious orthodoxy that negates liberties, the core of American conservative creed.”

Now, Shain says, some of the same political actors who helped foster the circumstances that enabled this government to rise are wringing their hands.

To which Israel’s pro-democracy protesters would likely respond, “Told you so.”

Back on the street in Tel Aviv, many in the crowd, though not all, link the decades of Palestinian occupation with the decline of Israel’s democracy.

“Rights for Jews only is not a democracy,” reads one poster. A massive black sign — made out of cloth and held up by half a dozen protesters — depicts the separation barrier, guard towers and barbed wire that contain the West Bank; in the middle, a dove bearing an olive branch bursts through the structure. “A nation that occupies another nation will never be free,” says the sign in Arabic, Hebrew and English.

Nearby, a woman calls through a bullhorn, “Democracy?”

“Yes!” the crowd responds.

“Occupation?”

“No!” they cry.

“I’m terrified of a situation where [Israel’s new government] doesn’t reduce American support,” says Rony HaCohen, an economist, pointing to the way the military occupation of the Palestinian territories has become normalized amid a lack of American censure.

But one protester questions even the United States’ ability to rein in its closest ally in the Middle East. Jesse Fox, a 41-year-old doctoral candidate at Tel Aviv University, says that while he’d like to see the Biden administration raise some pressure, he believes Israel is already headed down “the path of Hungary” and other countries that have abandoned democratic principles.

“It starts with the court reforms,” he says. “After that, they have plans to try to bring the media under government control. And then, who knows?”

And as an American Jewish immigrant who has lived in Israel for the better part of 20 years, Fox adds, “I want Americans to realize that, right now, being ‘pro-Israel’ means opposing the Israeli government.”

How does anyone in this country pay for summer camp?

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Deseret News, 11 June 2021

I used to love summer: the heat, the beach, the afternoon thunderstorms, those sickeningly sweet, dye-infused, high-fructose corn syrup filled popsicles that suddenly appear in the grocery store. But now that I’m a working mom with two children, turning the calendar over from May to June fills me with dread.

It’s not because my kids are home for the summer — in fact, I wish I could spend several months on holiday with my children. No, I dread summer because of the cost of summer camp, which is obscenely, ridiculously expensive here in Palm Beach County, Florida, as it is in much of the country.

This summer, we will pay upwards of $1,700 per month to send our two kids to summer camp — $300 more than we pay for preschool during the year and $300 more than we pay in rent every month.

Sit with that for a minute: In a normal month, we pay almost the same amount of money for rent as we do child care. In the summer, we pay more for child care than we do rent.

But I want to make summer camp happen for my kids because, when I was young, I felt the pain of missing out. My parents couldn’t afford camp, so I often accompanied my dad, who was a janitor and lawn man, as he cleaned one sorority house and then cut grass at another.

For my help, he paid me a small wage. And while I did learn a lot about real life and hard work and responsibility — lessons that have served me well, of course — I sometimes think I missed out on some quintessential aspect of childhood: a true summer.

Like my parents, I could probably keep my kids home as I work now. I could plop them down in front of the TV with some sweet squeezy-pops in hand.

But I want their summers to be more than that. I want them to have fond memories of water play with friends and singing songs and immersing themselves in art projects that end up hanging on the walls of our home.

And so here I am, so worried about paying for summer camp that I’m tightening my belt — literally. For lunch most days, I’m opting for seltzer. Two birds, one stone: I save money and slim down for weekend trips to the beach.

That so many American families are struggling to pay for summer camp is a failure of both society and policy.

For school-aged kids, there are far too few free or low-cost camp options and not enough spots. It’s the rare summer camp that offers scholarships. And demand outstrips supply.

But don’t just take it from me. A new report by the Afterschool Alliance says the same.

The special report on summer camp, “Time for a Game-Changing Summer, With Opportunity and Growth for All of America’s Youth,” reveals that not only do Americans struggle with a lack of child care options in the summer months, but also that, as is the case with everything in this country, the issue is rife with economic inequalities (that often translate to racial inequalities).

An “increase in summer program participation,” the study notes, has been “driven largely by families with higher incomes, while unmet demand for summer programs remains high, especially among families with low incomes.”

“For every child in a summer program, another would be enrolled if a program were available,” the report notes. So that means that we need at least double the amount of spots that we currently have.

I asked other working moms about the summer camp conundrum and most said they spent the year saving for summer camp, only to start the new school year wiped out financially and beginning to save again for the next summer. Some who couldn’t afford summer camp talked of complicated schedules that involved swapping child care responsibilities with other friends with kids. Many mentioned that the YMCA offers summer camp on a sliding price scale but also added that the program filled up quickly; others felt their local YMCA programs were still financially out of their reach.

On the other end of the financial spectrum, I’ve got a colleague in New York City who would probably love to pay $1,700 a month for summer camp. In her neighborhood, summer camp runs $1,500 a week. Per child. With two kids, she would pay $3,000 each week, for a grand total of $12,000 a month.

From where I sit, my colleague is wealthy. But she and her husband don’t have that kind of money, so they’ve crafted a unique summer camp plan. They’re renting a house in Connecticut and sending their kids to day camp there — renting a house for the summer is actually cheaper than paying for New York’s programs.

This whole conversation applies to after-school programs, too. In the fall, my daughter will begin public school. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be off the financial hook. The starting bell rings at 7:45 a.m. and school lets out at 2:45 p.m., a little over half way through my work day. Her public school has no free after-school program. We will have to either pick her up or pay.

This is the case in much of the country: The Afterschool Alliance notes that for every kid in an after-school program, there are three waiting to get in.

I’m not going to blame the camps or after-school programs themselves. They have their expenses and their owners need to turn a profit (probably so they, in turn, can send their own kids to astronomically expensive summer camps and after-school programs).

Instead, I see this as a major policy failure. And though the Biden administration is promising free preschool for 3- and 4-yearolds, what about good, safe, high-quality summer camps and after-school programs for all of America’s children, regardless of age and income?

Without support, parents are left to figure it out on their own, often sacrificing their savings, if they have some. Moms sometimes abandon their career plans to take jobs that allow them to pick up their kids after school or have summers off, and then get stuck in what has been called the “pink collar ghetto” of jobs that allow us to work and take care of the kids.

I wonder how low-income and middle-class women and families will ever get ahead in this country that talks a lot about “family values” but does little to actually help us stand on our feet. And I wonder how America will remain ahead in the world without its women — half the population — fully engaging in the workforce because we don’t have the supportive policies we need to do so.

The summer camp conundrum — and other policy gaps — exact an unmeasurable toll. The psychological impact of running up against the other glass ceiling — that of unaffordable child care and the way women must scale back their ambitions accordingly — is devastating.

This is the type of thing that infuriates me to the point that I’ve considered throwing my hat into the political ring. AOC rode the whole “I’m a waitress from the Bronx” thing into office. Why can’t I take my “I’m a mom who’s outraged about how expensive summer camp is” platform all the way to D.C.?

I’m telling you, I’d do it … if only I weren’t so darn busy sipping seltzer and researching low-cost — or at least semi-affordable — summer camp options for my kids.


How a faith-based group you’ve never heard of is impacting American politics

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Deseret News, 31 May 2021

Although the next presidential election is still 31⁄2 years away, some Republican hopefuls are already taking tentative first steps that could, eventually, lead to the White House.

Top GOP leaders will be at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference, which will take place June 17-19 in Orlando, Florida, to court some of their party’s most important members — religious conservatives — and see how these voters respond to their pitch.

The list of invited speakers includes big names like former President Donald Trump — who has not yet ruled out running in 2024 — and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley. Politicians that many see as the future of the Republican Party, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are also expected to make an appearance, along with lesser known but still important figures like Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, and Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-North Carolina, who is currently the youngest member of Congress.

Events like the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conference offer politicians a chance to deliver unfiltered messages directly to members of the public — helping to shape the national dialogue — as well as the opportunity to connect with potential supporters and donors, experts on religion and politics say.

Attendees leave the conferences energized. Back home, they start spreading the word about different political candidates and some become early organizers for future presidential campaigns.

To some extent, the “Road to Majority” and gatherings like it can make or break a Republican candidate’s relationship with religious conservatives, who play a key role in the GOP, said Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government.

These events can be the start of a relationship between candidates and attendees that leads to cash donations, campaign volunteering and a supportive buzz — little things that make a big difference over time.

“It’s not the event itself — it’s the snowballing effect over time,” Rozell said, adding, “I would expect any presidential aspirant to show up.”

The Faith and Freedom Coalition was founded by Ralph Reed, a powerful religious and political leader whom Time Magazine once called “the right hand of God” in a 1995 article about his former organization, the Christian Coalition.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition, launched in 2009, aims to cast a wider net than Reed’s previous group. It seeks to serve not just Christian conservatives, but “values voters” of many stripes, Reed told The Economist in 2010.

By 2011, CNN was already calling the organization a “political powerhouse,” noting that “just about every Republican” who hoped to snag the 2012 GOP nomination would be present at the group’s annual conference that year.

However, the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s $50 million push to get out the conservative vote in 2020 failed to win Trump the reelection he was looking for. Now, they’re regrouping.

The goal of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conferences is not just to connect voters with Republican stars, said Tim Head, the organization’s executive director.

The gatherings also create “synergy and momentum” and impact the GOP’s policy plans, he said, explaining that state and local politicians — who are both speakers and attendees at such conferences — pick up ideas from organized presentations to casual chats in the hallways and everywhere in between.

“It’s very common that those organic conversations and presentations end up making their way into legislation,” Head said. “A Texas legislator ends up presenting on what happened in the (state) legislature this year and then we get a call from a guy in Tennessee, ‘Hey, can you get me in touch?’ or ‘I’ve been working on a bill.’”

In this manner, policies and legislation “spread like wildfire,” he added. “Conferences are a great way for these things to jump state lines.”

The Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conferences help steer the Republican Party, Rozell said. They enable GOP leaders to see what politicians or policies animate the religious conservatives in the crowd.

Religious conservatives, he explained, “have an outsize influence on Republican nominations — not only at the national level but particularly at the state and local level.”

And conferences like the “Road to Majority,” Rozell added, “have a significant impact on many of the leaders and supporters of religious conservative organizations.”

However, other academics are less convinced about the impact of such events.

For example, Clyde Wilcox, a professor of government at Georgetown University who used to attend the Christian Coalition’s annual conferences, says that, back then, there was little correlation between which politicians appeared at the event and who ended up becoming the Republican presidential nominee.

But Rozell believes the buzz generated by these conferences can begin to translate to a groundswell that could potentially carry a candidate to the White House.

“Money follows political support,” he said. “Being able to build a grassroots network of potential supporters and being a leader in the culture wars — that’s going to bring money.”

Raising credibility and visibility among the grassroots helps deliver “significant funds to their future campaigns,” Rozell added.

I’m Israeli. My husband is Palestinian. We fear we can never go home.

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

The Washington Post, 22 May 2021

Over the past two weeks, watching the escalation of violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories from my home in Florida has been horrifying and heartbreaking. I’m devastated by the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians, as I have been every time these clashes take place. But the level of intercommunal violence this month feels worse than anything in recent memory: street-to-street fighting, tear gas fired inside the al-Aqsa Mosquecompound, waves of Hamas rockets fired at Israeli towns, Israeli airstrikes devastating neighborhoods in Gaza City.

One moment, in particular, stands out in my mind: Last week in Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv, a group of Jewish men set upon a car driven by an Arab man, pulled him out and beat him. According to Haaretz, the man survived, but in widely shared video, you can hear commentators using the word “lynch” to describe the scene as it unfolds.

Any feeling person would have been disgusted and terrified, but as I watched the footage, I felt nauseated as I realized: He could be my husband.

I’m American Israeli; my husband, Mohamed, is a Palestinian from the West Bank. We met there, in Ramallah, but when we decided to marry in 2014, we knew the challenges we’d face legally, socially and economically. Because of Israel’s prohibition of family reunification between its citizens and Palestinians from the occupied territories, there’s a likelihood we wouldn’t be able to legally live together inside Israel. Shortly after we married in Florida, I submitted our marriage certificate to the Israeli Consulate in Miami to update my status, to no avail. If we ever wanted to live in Israel, other mixed couples told me, we would have to apply annually for a permit to reside together; and that even if granted, such a permit might not allow my husband to work inside the country. It’s not clear that we would be able to live in the occupied territories together legally — in his family’s building outside of Ramallah, in part of what’s known as Area A. Not to mention the cultural taboo: When Mohamed told his parents that he intended to marry me, a Jewish woman who immigrated to Israel, his father rejected the match, meaning that we wouldn’t be able to live in the family home anyway. We realized we had no choice but to leave the land we both love dearly. While my husband has been clear-eyed about the decision and has always said we won’t be able to go back until there’s peace, I’ve held onto the hope that we’ll return and raise our two children there, among family and amid the olive trees, limestone alleys, foothills and sea that we hold dear.

But the fighting this month has left me hopeless. I now feel that our exile is permanent, that going back isn’t an option; that my husband and our mixed children wouldn’t be safe if we lived inside Israel and that my life might be in danger in the occupied territories.

Of course, we weren’t thinking about any of this when we fell in love.

We met in 2011, when I went to Ramallah for a story. A fellow journalist introduced us, and we ended up working together on the piece. We kept in sporadic touch over the next year and a half, with Mohamed serving as my interpreter for a couple of other articles, including a heart-wrenching story about Palestinian families who’ve been split between Gaza and the West Bank. Little did we know that a few years later we would end up in a comparable situation, with Mohamed forced to leave his extended family in the West Bank to start a life with me.

By the time we began dating in early 2013, in addition to freelancing, I was teaching at a Palestinian university in East Jerusalem, Al Quds University. I lived, for half of the week, in the Palestinian village of Abu Dis. I was in my third year of studying Arabic. I felt some level of integration into Palestinian society that made me feel that anything, including peace, was possible, if remote. And the early days of our relationship only reinforced that. At school, my students and I read centuries-old literature from Islamic Spain, a time and place where Jewish and Muslim cultures nourished one another, flourishing together. Outside school, Mohamed and I had picnics in olive groves and sipped tea on a rooftop, overlooking the West Bank. From our spot, we could see all the way to Jordan. From that view, we couldn’t tell where one place ended and the other began.

But at the same time, my courtship with Mohamed and my work at the university were characterized by limitations and inequality. I saw how Jewish settlers were free to move in and out and through the Palestinian territories and checkpoints as though the Green Line didn’t exist, while Mohamed had to either apply for a permit or sneak through a hole in the security fence if he wanted to spend the day with me in Jerusalem. I felt this when I traveled to the university in Abu Dis or to Ramallah to visit Mohamed, using segregated transportation to move through the territories that are ultimately controlled by Israel. At the university, I felt the pain of my students, some of whose fathers and brothers were imprisoned under administrative detention; some of whose homes had been raided by Israeli authorities; some of whom had been in cars that were pelted by stones thrown by Jewish settlers. On more than one occasion, Israeli soldiers made incursions onto campus, firing tear gas and breaking windows.

We’ve been in the United States together for more than six years; my husband is now an American citizen. We’ve built a life here — a home, a small business, children. And even though I grew up in Gainesville, in some ways, the United States has never felt completely like home. If, let’s say, my current outlet decides it needs a foreign correspondent in Israel, I’d go in a heartbeat; if we decide we no longer want our children to grow up apart from their cousins; if we miraculously save enough money to retire; or if the laws in Israel change and we could live together legally and safely — and if the country stops its awful march to the right, we’d return.

But with each Israeli bullet or Hamas rocket, every report of destroyed Palestinian businesses or of a synagogue set on fire, all the ifs increasingly seem insurmountable.

A cease-fire has been in place since early Friday morning, but lasting peace won’t hold without tremendous, systemic changes. We’re beyond those superficial programs that bring Jews and Palestinians together in dialogue. Sadly, there aren’t enough friendships across ethnic lines — and even if there were, friendship isn’t enough. It’s not even enough to love each other: Mohamed and I love each other, but to preserve ourselves and our marriage, we had to leave his homeland, my adopted country. We live half a world away, safe from the latest round of bloodshed, but at root is the same issue: devastating and persistent inequality. Without addressing the laws that give Jewish Israelis privilege while stripping Palestinians of their human rights, there’s no way for Jews and Palestinians to live together peacefully.

I’ve read a lot of thoughtful, intelligent analyses about the most recent escalation, pointing to the raids at al-Aqsa, the evictions of Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah or the awful incentives of Israel’s domestic politics. But all of these arguments trace back to systemic inequality, a two-tiered legal system that permits unchecked expansion of Israeli settlements and keeps Palestinians in a perpetual limbo of statelessness on their own land.

Yes, there’s violence from the Palestinian side. And yes, Palestinians have, over time, missed opportunities to exact and to make concessions. But consider how the peace process has become a farce. Consider how Palestinian homes are punitively demolished. Consider the unequal allocation of water resources in the West Bank. Consider the shortage of classrooms in East Jerusalem that can keep some Palestinian children out of school or forces their families to scrape together the money to pay for private school.

The list goes on and on.

Inequality is what allowed me, a Jewish woman born and raised in America, to immigrate to Israel while my husband’s Palestinian brethren who fled or were expelled from the land can’t return. It’s why, as a mixed family whose story began there, we may never be able to return.