Foreign Correspondent Margot Kiser
Letters to Annie from Kaftanistan
Words and Images in Transit
PARIS, France—Unfamiliar with Paris Nord railway station I approached a group of men for directions. Gauging from their clothing the men didn’t look either like passengers or police, but they did look like authorities of some kind, who’d likely know where to direct me. One man, a hulking brute, stepped forward to reply: Do I […]
LONDON, England – On June 14th a 24-story public housing apartment building caught fire killing at least 80. A faulty freezer-fridge in an apartment sparked the blaze, but police say flammable insulation and exposed gas pipes along the building’s only staircase fueled it. The death toll is expected to rise, so it’s no wonder police […]
I spent the last several weeks in Tucson helping my mother transition to “independent living” after she’d suffered a mild heart attack and stroke. The first takeway – in Tucson (and probably in most retirement communities) elder care is not a service, it’s an industry. Before her discharge from the hospital a case manager told […]
OMANعمامه A Dubai-based pilot and friend suggested I visit Salalah, a port town on the southern tip of Oman. He told me to visit from June to September or in January, when the monsoon rains paint the sun-baked desert a brilliant green. “What’s the story with Oman?,” I asked a Yemeni friend. “There is […]
Sailing dhows made of garbage, crusaders, flying low over a baobab-packed forest, guerrilla warfare, Maulidi festival, tattooed and “bearded badasses”. This year I seemed to be at a loss for words. For most of last year I stayed in Lamu. I wanted to keep a close eye on a military operation.
Meet my friend Bill. I’ve known Bill since the 90s when I moved to Montana. He’s a Wall St. banker with a manse in Greenwich, Connecticut and a sprawling ranch near the Missouri Breaks, a remote area the American artist Charlie Russell made famous through his Old West cowboy and indian paintings. Bill belongs to […]
Nairobi is the Maasai word for “cold water”. With an elevation of 5,889 feet above sea level, it is by altitude the 9th highest city in the world, higher than Denver, Colorado, “the mile high city” in the storied American west. Developers and businesspeople seem to be scrambling to get out of the Nairobi’s congested […]
Portugal hardly ever seems in the news. I never gave the little country next to Spain much thought. Recently, however, a writer friend of mine and his wife first told me about Algarve, a largely undiscovered coastal region of Portugal. I haven’t seen refugees from North Africa or the Middle East yet. However, I guess […]
Random images from travels and subjects I wrote about last year.
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