A Huge Border Wall is Not the Answer

A Huge Border Wall is Not the Answer on Pura Vida. Sometimes.

In the late 1800s, my family came from Solingen, Prussia and built their homestead in a canyon on the Mexican border before Arizona was a state. At that time, Nogales was literally a walnut grove bisected by an international line with little more than a railroad station and post office. My grandmother and all her siblings were born on that land, as was my father and his siblings, and it’s where we spent summers when my mom dropped us off with family and went to work. When I was growing up, the fence, as we called it, was literally a […]

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You Know Nothing About Cuba

You Know Nothing About Cuba on Pura Vida Sometimes

No matter how many books you read, classes you take, or how up on current events you are, there’s no way to understand Cuba, even if you’ve been there. It is a country of contrasts and incomparable warmth and beauty. I studied and was obsessed with the country – its politics, revolutionary history, intellectual capital, and culture – for about 15 years before I had the opportunity to visit the island. After a week in Cuba, the one thing I knew to be true, in the words of Aristotle, was “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” I began studying Cuba at the university […]

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Have Passport – F Your Rules

Have Passport - Pura Vida Sometimes

When I was literally 18 and a day, I traveled overseas for the first time. It was an amazing, illuminating experience – all that I’d hoped it would be, in most ways – but a couple of days into the trip I broke the travel rules and was labeled a delinquent and punished for the remainder of our travels. In hindsight, do I feel bad about what I did? Nope. I was invited to be part of a musical ambassador program, for high school musicians (or in my case, recent graduates) in which we traveled to seven countries in two […]

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