Few can claim to have babysat for a great poet, but Rita can. Here is her personal memory of Seamus Heaney, who died last week... The voice on the phone was unmistakably Irish. Was I free to babysit on Saturday evening? I was. It was 1971 in Berkeley and the Irishman ... Read More...
Dispatches from the Former New World
Rita works her way through a summer's worth of spy novels, and looks for parallels with real-life events... Patriot or Traitor? That question has lingered over the summer as the Edward Snowden whistle-blower case has played out in front of the world’s media at Moscow Airport. Americans seem to be about ... Read More...
As America debates race yet again, Rita recalls an incident in racial profiling that occured close to home... America is going through another one of its periodic Rorschach tests on race. The O. J. trial, Rodney King, now Trayvon Martin. Not to mention the long litany of names going back through ... Read More...
Rita finds that her traditional English cynicism cannot survive a remarkable Independence Day performance... Parades, picnics, fireworks, and flags. Tomorrow is the great American national holiday celebrating a bunch of traitors to the Crown. Or as they are known over here, Patriots. During my early years in America I maintained a ... Read More...
Rita marks the Queen's 60th coronation anniversary with an extraordinary confession involving an old-fashioned loo, a taste for lead, and Her Majesty's nose... The most irritating thing about being a Brit in America is the expectation that I must be as enamored of the Royal family as Americans are. Except in the ... Read More...
Glorying in the brief Washington spring, Rita proves she really is English by feeling nostalgic for something she never had... As I write the demented robin who inhabits the dogwood tree in our garden is repeatedly flinging himself against the window in a kind of avian kamikaze assault. The thump, thump, thump ... Read More...
News and internet coverage of the Boston bombings had all the ingredients of a TV thriller boxset. Rita is transfixed, but also disturbed... 24, Homeland, and now The Boston Bombing, TV shows that kept Americans on the edge of their seats with suspenseful plots, unexpected twists, false leads, explosions, car chases, ... Read More...
Rita explains the tradition of the weather-predicting Groundhog - and how it became yet another pawn in the Culture Wars... Americans have endured the War on Christmas, the War on the Easter Bunny, and the War on North Korea – oh wait, that one hasn’t happened yet and it isn’t funny. ... Read More...
Bizarre Flemish coincidences and worshipping at the Temple of Apple in this dispatch, as Rita visits New York... I first suspected something was amiss with my New York Subway app when it advised us to travel from Midtown Manhattan to the Lower East Side via Brooklyn, on the other side of ... Read More...
Rita discovers the Platonic Ideal of an American painting... “You want to see modern art? Here” said my cousin, opening the door to his garage with a flourish and gesturing towards metal shelves stacked with the usual detritus of utility rooms the world over. We were in Ghent, Belgium, home to ... Read More...