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Posts Tagged ‘Contributing Writer’

just words

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 12, 2025| 8 Comments »

A new restaurant has opened not far from where I work. I paused in my journey this morning to peer at the menu from afar. Words rang out. “Hey, Nigger. This is where people walk.” Startled I turned toward the voice to see a young white man striding past. Now I’d seen him earlier in the morning. He was clearly strung out on something so there was no need to say anything in return. But as I returned to work I was startled that the words of a junkie, someone clearly in need of some help of some sort, could touch me so. Probably doesn’t help that I am currently immersed in historical research about the profiling and imprisonment of free Black seaman in the antebellum south.

Nor does it help that as Steve and I continue to make our way in this world that people continually, immediately, assume that I am either the paid home health aid or the overnight caregiver. And so then the onus is on me to calmly explain that I am his wife. The onus. I know of a lovely older Black woman in an interracial relationship and she shared that in the retirement community where they reside she always carries her resident card to prove she belongs there and is not “just” a visiting care giver.

We live in a time of unprecedented whitewashing where people in power are trying to normalize outright racism and bigotry and even more so foment deep and abiding ignorance about this nation’s past let alone its present. People are not questioning their assumptions. Race does matter regardless of what a super rich and powerful white minority are trying to assert.

Just some Sunday musings … best get back to my research so that that forgotten story can be shared soon.

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let’s end with … as a child in bangalore

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

When my father was reassigned to Vienna we had to say good-bye to all of our friends. We had a party with my school friends. I “planned” it but my Ayah did all the work. The Ayah took care of me and my sister and made sure we weren’t stolen. She tucked me in bed at night, and chased the animals out. She got me up each morning. She was dark of skin with long dark hair. She would get me out of trouble and keep me safe. If I broke something, like a nice glass or cup, she often took the blame for me. 

Hadi was the butler and oversaw the house and whole compound. He reported to my father. He was kind and gentle. One day I decided to cook a steak. I had to cook something. I was in the kitchen. I don’t remember why. He watched as I cooked the steak guiding me. When I thought it was done he said no but I didn’t listen. I insisted on eating it and it made me sick.

Let’s end with the Maharajah. My first impression of him was that he was fat. I mean he was a very big man to a small boy. My dad took me to work at the library that was located in Coorg. And that’s where I think I first saw him. He and my dad and I took a walk around his place. I wouldn’t call it a palace. Big compound is closer. The animals were loose in the compound. There was an elephant, gray, probably a male but I don’t know for sure. Probably a giraffe. He hunted. He shot a mother tiger and captured the cubs. There was a batch of those that I saw and played with. Four of them. They were very small. They would fit in my hands if I held them now. I think I told you they were white but they weren’t white solidly through. I don’t remember what year that was but I saw him more than once. I know he met with Queen Elizabeth in 1961 as she toured India. I remember seeing her driving in a convertible. I was looking down from the roof of the library. 

I can’t think of these times as unusual. It was simply my childhood. We moved on to Vienna for a few years. I joined the Boy Scouts, an international troop, and received an award for knot tying. I had weak ankles and a doctor their prescribed ice skating. My mother taught me some fancy ballroom dances and my father tried to teach me guitar. There I was introduced to sachertorte. It is still one of my favorite desserts. Like I said, simply my childhood.


Photo Sources:

Horne Family Album

https://archive.org/details/propix.275036712

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as a child in bangalore 2

Posted in Guest Contributor, Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 8, 2025| 6 Comments »

In Steve’s own words …

In Bangalore, I used to walk to the local Indian school, St. Anthony’s Boy’s School. Sometimes I took a rickshaw. The driver would be peddling on the street and I would wave him down. It was cheap and I had enough pocket money. I thought school was thorough and complete meaning subjects were covered thoroughly and completely without any gaps or holes. But when I went on to a British school in Bangalore I discovered there were holes in what I had been taught. It didn’t matter. I just loved learning and reading. Given that my father ran a library there were plenty of books at my disposal. My parents were open to me reading anything. There were no PTA (parent teacher association) meetings. No judgements. My father probably gave me the most books on all sorts of subjects. 

The dachshund would meet me when I walked home from school. My general routine after returning home was to put on outdoor clothes and go climb a tree. There were not so many other kids around. Sometimes a few. We lived on Richmond Road, a street with lots of bungalows. White people generally lived in these bungalows, mostly Brits. They worked for the state I guess maybe civil servants.

after first communion

My dad had a jeep as part of his job. On Sundays we would drive to mass at the Catholic church. I remember the building as spacious. Sometimes he would drive me to the library where he worked. That seemed spacious to me too. Everything seemed spacious to me back then. Even our bungalow.

I remember the bungalow had a veranda. I remember lots of plants on ours planted by the gardener and by my dad as well. My father liked to garden growing all kinds of plants edible and not. I remember everything from African violets to basil. 

In addition to the dachshund and siamese cat, he owned parakeets. About four or five blue parakeets in a green cage. He also kept fish in a standard fish bowl. They were just plain old fish not very interesting to me. He also kept two horses. He loved animals. He’d grown up on a farm in Nebraska. 

I fell from a mango tree and my dad looked at my arm and decided it was broken and took me to the doctor. I also fell while climbing a wall. A piece of the wall broke off in my hand and that’s how I fell. A stranger, an Indian man,  picked me up and took me up to the house. Broke my arm that time too catching myself with my hand and elbow beneath me. But aside from events like this I felt safe and happy in Bangalore.

I enjoyed the food. My first glass of water there I drank not realizing there were peppercorns in the glass. Overall the food was not spicy. We had a cook. He would make me fried chicken. When my father was entertaining he would take over the kitchen. He greatly enjoyed cooking. From him I learned how to make pesto. He was a good cook. 

My younger sister had been born in Italy. My mother had her hands full with me, a baby and my father and all our animals. She was very beautiful and always smelled nice. Like flowers.

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as a child in bangalore

Posted in Guest Contributor, Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2025| 5 Comments »

In Steve’s own words:

We were there from 1957 to 1962. My father worked as a librarian for the U.S. State Department. I was five years old when we arrived and I could still speak Italian from his previous post in Genoa, Italy. I had great pets in India. My father had a dachshund. A long skinny regular sized dachshund not a miniature. He also had a Siamese cat that he had brought from Italy. In addition I had a young mongoose. His name was Mongi. My father purchased him from a snake charmer. I most remember how he used to run up the sleeve of my shirt. I first saw him when the snake charmer came to visit our bungalow. He took him out of a bag and put him on the ground. He ran up to the snake and sniffed. The snake had come out of the bushes around our place. I think it was a cobra. The mongoose ignored the snake for a bit and sniffed all of the hands and feets he could find before returning to the snake. The snake charmer held a bag open and the mongoose ran back inside. The snake charmer picked up the snake very carefully and placed the snake in a different bag. The snake charmer, who probably saw my face filled with delight, made my father an offer. In exchange for a 5 rupee note, maybe about a $1, my father bought me the mongoose.

sitting on the steps of the bungalow book in hand

Over time I had more than one mongoose though only one at a time. The first Mongi got too used to people and got too close to someone cutting grass with a sickle and was killed. The snake charmers visited the house once a week and they always had a mongoose for sale. I remember my father reading Kipling’s Riki Tiki Tavi to me. In the end I think I had two or three mongoose before we left India for the U.S. before embarking for Austria. They were all killed by the sickle because the men wielding the sickle sat in the grass looking very inviting and the mongoose would get too close. The last Mongi I had to leave  behind because he was not allowed to enter the U.S. I felt like he was being unfairly blamed for killing chickens when he’d never killed a chicken in his life.

They are about as big as a gray squirrel. Our Siamese cat liked to carry them around in its mouth and treated them like kittens. The dachshund also liked to pick them up and carry them around by the waist. The trio got along fine even when a new Mongi appeared. They liked to sleep together and with me. When the Ayah put me to bed, she covered my bed with mosquito netting. The mongoose would wait and unstuff the net where it was tucked underneath the mattress and slip into bed with me. We kept him fed fairly well with leftovers from the table and bits of chicken. They could come and go as they pleased in and out of the house and into any bedroom. My mother thought me and my father were nuts but she bore with it. The family gardeners liked them because they killed the snakes that the gardeners chanced upon.

My mother had a harder time dealing with the goats. They weren’t pets. They were more of a nuisance. We kept a few in the compound. They were kept for their meat and had free range to wander wherever liked. I rarely messed with them because they would butt fiercely with their heads. Sometimes they wandered into the house. They’d walk right through the screen door by butting the screen out. They usually made their way to the couch and fell asleep. I think they thought they were people.

The most common animal I saw in India were monkeys. There were several mango trees in the compound. The monkeys infested the trees. Rheesus monkeys. They made a chittering sound. They ate the mangoes and also threw them to the ground. I liked to climb the mango trees to pick mangoes and just eat them fresh. I still like the taste of fresh mangoes.

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jim

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , on January 7, 2025| 5 Comments »

I can’t quite remember how Steve and I first met Jim and Lily his beagle. It was during the pandemic. Perhaps as we walked past his house and he was outside tinkering on his car. A seemingly forever project for him. A connection was made somehow and he came to our aid many a time unasked. There was a host of electrical work which made sense given that that was his profession. But then there were those other things like the time I texted him to ask if he might stop by the house to help Steve finish baking some bread. Jim was a strong fellow who could lift the heavy mixer and things that Steve could not do. And then there was the time I called Jim from the back of a taxi. Steve and I had just left the ER and I feared an exhausted Steve could not make it up the spiral staircase. In the end it took more than Jim to get Steve up the stairs but he was there, a companion, along on the journey. As he lost weight, I knew he was ill and then became still more ill. One day I did ask him, why are you helping Steve so much? He replied with that sparkle in his eyes, I’ve done a lot of things in this life that I need to account for by giving back. When I walked by his house months ago and saw people clearing things out I hoped that he was safe somewhere with family. I have recently thought about him often especially on recent Monday mornings as I look out the window at the curb, then sigh, and struggle to bundle up, take out the trash and/or recycling and then drag the dumpsters to the curb before the city trucks go by. When Jim was walking Lily on a Sunday evening he would often drag out the dumpsters. He not only looked out for Steve. I don’t know why I did it last night but I did. I looked him up and found what I was expecting to see some day. His obituary as written by his loving family. I am grateful to have made his acquaintance. https://www.dohertyfuneralservice.com/obituary/james-cafferky-jr

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so what am I up to …

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2020| 1 Comment »

DSCN0284

And so what I have I been up to besides photographing Spiderwort like crazy?

I’ve been enjoying delving into the past to research the people who may have worked and/or worshipped at Trinity Church in the City of Boston. You can check out recent Facebook posts here: https://www.facebook.com/TrinityBostonShop/

I’m having a lot of fun with instagram. I know I’m late to the game but I don’t mind: https://www.instagram.com/cynthiaestaples/

I’ve also been trying to be more disciplined about redefining for myself what exactly does it mean to be a part-time freelancer in today’s world. A number of places I would have done work for won’t be reopening for quite awhile and certainly not reopening in the same way as in the before Covid-times. AND even as I have the luxury to take time to ponder such a thing with a roof firmly over my head and the refrigerator full of food, I cannot help but weep at what’s happening across the U.S. right now. The saying comes to mind, this too shall pass, but pass into what?

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when a stranger takes your hand

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 27, 2016| 3 Comments »

I’m not as limber as I once was and so I was having difficulty getting through the window but I didn’t have to fret for long because a stranger took my hand and pulled me through and when I lost my shoe on the rim of the window frame, he picked it up and gave it back to me and then turned and continued to help other strangers out of the train.

I wasn’t sure that I’d write about the chaotic experience of being on the Orange Line train yesterday in Boston’s Back Bay Station that filled with smoke. In the moment I was less concerned about the possibility of a fire in the station and more concerned about the growing panic of the people around me. Later I just wanted to let the incident go. But then today I picked up something and I remembered the feel of that man’s hand holding mine.

It was rush hour. People had had a long day and just wanted to get home. The car in which I stood was not packed but it was tight enough especially as most of us wore the beginnings of our winter gear. The lights were on but there wasn’t much air circulating and the intercom system must not have been working because there was no news being shared by anyone. The train had partially pulled away from Back Bay Station before coming to a halt, and later, officials would note that that was the reason the train operator could not open the doors, because of the danger of people stepping onto the tracks and landing on the electrified third rail. But most people were not thinking of that as the smoke grew thicker, and from inside the car, we could see people on the platform start to run for exits.

Even as I was starting to say, please, be calm, I felt my own panic rising. And then people began to scream, especially when they realized the doors were not opening. People began beating at the windows. The smaller windows on the sliding doors were easier to break. Individual flight was on many a person’s mind for sure but others were trying to help scared people through the small openings. Then in the part of the car where I stood, a man on the platform motioned people away from a larger window. He was not a train official or one of the policeman stationed in the area. He was just a regular guy. He kicked at the window, again and again, until it flew in, a single large sheet, shattering into a spider’s web pattern but no jagged edges did I see. People started leaping out the window while that man and some others stood, held out their hands and helped strangers out. I did not stop to ask his name but I think I shall never forget him.

Read more: Boston Globe article

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on the road

Posted in Inspiration, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on August 7, 2016| 3 Comments »

Visiting Virginia a few summers ago, I stopped in a small city. It was a literal crossroads of sorts. Fancy antique stores and cheap thrift shops lined the road. Around these buildings people had set up long tables for further display.  My partner and I sauntered through the buildings.  As usual in such places we found a wonderful mix of treasure and trash. Later, he wanted to peruse the tables.  Usually I would have raced ahead but I found myself hesitating as I watched one of the tables being prepared.  Two men arranged an amazing array of items, items that had one unifying theme. They all displayed the Confederate flag.

While I had to pass that table to get back to the car, I did not get close. Eye contact was made with one gentleman. With both our heads held high, we nodded in that southern way of closed lipped acknowledgement. It was not an unexpected sight especially because this encounter took place shortly after all the hullabaloo of removing the Confederate flag from institutions nationwide. Not unexpectedly, at least to me, online sales of the flag (and in-store sales depending on where one lived) went through the roof. But it’s America, right? As private citizens, those gentlemen could choose to sell the flag. And I could choose to walk away.

Recently one of my brothers who lives in southern Virginia described driving past an estate where half of the owner’s lawn was covered by a Confederate flag. I told him I wanted to ask the owner what was the intention behind such a display. He joked that I probably wouldn’t make it halfway up the driveway before the owner would step out with his licensed gun, and perhaps his dog at his side, to encourage me to leave his property. Okay, my brother became a bit more descriptive and I chastised him for making such jokes. If the owner wanted me to leave his property, he could. It’s America, right?

For those who do not know, I am an African American woman who grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. When I return to my hometown or attend a reunion at the school I attended in North Carolina or visit family now settled in South Carolina, I have at least two expectations. One is to bathe in the beauty of the southern natural landscape and two is the likelihood of seeing Confederate flags. After living in New England for nearly twenty years, I certainly have that first expectation. There is no New England state that I have visited where I have not experienced great natural beauty. But that latter expectation … no, I guess I did not have that one though I now do after last weekend.

I later described it as being caught up in a Klu Klux Klan rally but no one wore a hood. There were no torches or anyone burning but there was plenty of black smoke and revving of engines. I’m  sure there were guns but none were on display. Nothing illegal was done that I could see except for some bikers racing by in the breakdown lane but they didn’t do so for long. They just did it to keep up with the pack, or I guess I should say the convoy, of three dozen or more vehicles — trucks, cars, jeeps, bikes — driving along the highway from Massachusetts into Rhode Island, waving the Confederate flag. The American flag was flown too of course.

When I saw the first truck, a large black pick up, with Trump and Pence stenciled in white on the side, I thought, “Well, this is America.” Then as we kept driving along I saw more vehicles, a beat up Corvette with a Confederate flag nailed to the roof, more pickup trucks with large chimneys and flashing lights in addition to their flags, bikers with the flags pinned to their leathers.  I really, really, really didn’t want to be in their midst but there was no other route to our destination.

I could avoid that table in the Virginia flea market with its sea of Confederate flags but I could not escape this experience. We all had to share the road, and we did so for a very long time. Finally the vehicles all left the road, to pull into a Rhode Island rest stop.  Their final destination I have no idea. We completed our journey into the quiet of Rhode Island’s small towns.  I slumped back into the seat, exhausted. Why was I exhausted?

Well …

Later that weekend, people asked me how did I know that there were three dozen or so vehicles in the convoy. I explained that I counted them. With the luxury of being a passenger and not the driver, I looked at each vehicle surrounding and then passing me. I looked at license plates (several New England states were represented). I looked at the drivers who would not look back at me. I got the feeling that they had all been instructed to keep their eyes on the road and to do nothing intimidating individually because what they were doing as a group was much more effective.

I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture, likely a combination, but there’s a thing that happens to me in certain situations. It’s the confluence of past and present. There’s a scene in the movie 12 Years a Slave, and a scene in the movie Glory, and scene in any movie  involving slavery, where a man or woman is tied up and whipped. I have many a friend and family member, of different races and ages and life experiences, who will turn away. I cannot. My back straightens. I hold my head high. Not so much to bear witness but it feels almost like channeling ancestors who did what they had to do to survive but they would not be subjugated. To sit in that position for an hour, so tense, was exhausting.

In that Virginia flea market, when I made eye contact with the vendor selling the Confederate flag, and nodded at him in acknowledgement, in a different day and age, for such behavior, for stepping out of my place, I would have been whipped. I know, I know. There some who might say, there you go stirring up the past again. But that past is a part of my American heritage, and every American’s heritage.

I am a major proponent of “just go with flow” and “just let things go.” Being caught up in that convoy for about an hour, those philosophical tendencies were replaced with something else. I increasingly wanted the drivers to look at me. I wanted to look into his or her eyes and to see who they were. And I wanted them to see me. As with the man in Virginia with the Confederate flag covering his lawn, I want them all to explain to me the intention of their display and to do so with other words than “It’s about heritage, not hate.”

I had my camera with me, of course, but I refused to pull it out. There was no need to capture in pixels and post on this blog such imagery. But I did want to share an experience that I will not let go of but I will certainly move beyond.

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hot off the press in Alimentum

Posted in Contributing Writer, Inspiration, Kitchen Inspirations, Photography, Publication Updates, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2015| 2 Comments »

It’s mid-July, and here in New England, we’re still talking about this past winter.  The seemingly unending piles of snow will long live in the memory, and for me, so will the unexpected creativity born out of solitude watching things grow even in the dead of winter.  I’m honored to have a series of images from that period featured in the latest Alimentum The Literature of Food.  Enjoy!

 

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since it’s april you could send a poem on a postcard …

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , on April 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

… but I usually like to send them off with just a simple word or two like “Hi, how are you?” and conclude with a smiley face.  Okay, sometimes I say a bit more, like “remember to look at the sunset outside your window.” These are a few of the postcards available in my online shop.  You can view the full selection via this link:  ImagesbyCynthia Postcards

http://www.zazzle.com/imagesbycynthia

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