Category: Uncategorized

The power of immigrant vision

May 29, 2017 stanleyobando

Founders’ Day remarks delivered at The Derryfield School, Manchester, New Hampshire, May 19, 2017. Thank you, Dr. Carter, the Founders, Mr. Sanborn, and everyone who

A room of our own: Costa Rican choteo and Virginia Woolf

May 10, 2017 stanleyobando

Originally published by The Tico Times, http://www.ticotimes.net. When I worked in English-language education and visited an advanced young-adult class in San José, I asked them

Why a Costa Rican Holy Week is a treasure to be savored

April 13, 2017 stanleyobando

I’m pleased to be writing a new column for Nature Air’s magazine, Nature Landings: “Word on the Street.” The magazine is full of fascinating travel

Waiting for gray (bochorno)

April 3, 2017 stanleyobando

Dear E., The longer I live in places where you can wear flip-flops 12 months a year, the more obsessed I become with seasons. It’s

Apapáchame – a little universe

February 20, 2017 stanleyobando

I woke up early this morning on your birthday. I’m not sure why, but it was a gift: your birthdays make me wistful, and it

(And now for a political interlude)

January 30, 2017 stanleyobando

Dear Dictionary of You Readers, I’ve been AWOL from this site, which means so much to me, for two reasons: first, I was putting out

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I sat down to write about coffee and tea, had a epiphany mid-sentence, and ended up with a (life-changing? definitely coffee-fueled) battle cry. Link in bio. #costaricadailyboost #costarica #costaricancoffee #selfacceptance

We need more art in our lives! It's martes para las artes and I'd love to know what artists are inspiring you, in #costarica or anywhere. We need this visual relief more than ever now with walls going up everywhere, and I'm not even talking USA, but San José where a frightful new Legislative Assembly building/bunker is bringing us down. Artisans, cartoonists, makers of any amazing thing, people who are combining political gumption with creativity...? Share your favorite creators so they can give us all a boost and show us the path away from architectural atrocities! And read more at the link in my bio about my first challenge of the year over at the #costaricadailyboost - an art-off of sorts. Photos from @alma.artesana.rt in #Curridabat, an awesome new hub for artisans. #martesparalasartes #tuesdaybeautay

On Saturday night as I stood at our neighborhood school with my husband and daughter, listening to a dizzying array of patriotic songs, one phrase reached out of the crowd and smacked me right across the face. It was a familiar one, from the Himno Patriótico del 15 de Setiembre: "Sepamos ser libres." May we know how to be free. But it struck me differently on this night. /In the context of the song, it's more of a rallying cry, and that's how it's usually used in Costa Rica, as in, "Don't forget that you're free. No one is the boss of us." But on Saturday, I realized it could also be more of a prayer. May we please learn how to carry this figurative torch we have been handed. / I don't know about you, but I get a boost from the idea that while hatred, greed and just plain stupidity are certainly behind many of the problems in our societies, we as a people might not be awful. We just don't know what we're doing. We haven't lost anything irreparably, not when those of us who do remember better times for our democracies had probably been dealt a winning hand in terms of race, gender or sexual orientation. I tell my daughter not to get frustrated because she's still learning how to do something. It's a process. Democracy is harder than tying our shoes, so we are still screwing it up after hundreds of years. But despite it all, here we are, learning and paying attention, still praying: may we know how to be free. (Is this just something I'm telling myself to feel better? Doesn't prayer sometimes fall into that category? Isn't it worth it, if it helps us keep going? Is this too deep for a Monday?) / I want to end with a concrete question for you: how do you approach being free, in the specific instance of your information intake? To you, does being free in today's world mean making sure you spend enough time isolated from the terrifying events around us so that you are still free to think and breathe? Does it mean cultivating the freedom that comes from full mastery of the facts, from staying informed so you are free to respond to any comer? Do you somehow achieve both? I struggle with this and would love to hear from you. #costaricadailyboost #costarica ❤️🇨🇷

Happy Independence Day, and welcome to my new year-long quest for fresh inspiration, perspectives, sources of sanity and reasons to laugh or cheer, all drawn from my favorite country on Earth. The Costa Rica Daily Boost, which I hope to share each weekday from now through Independence Day 2020, is designed to be short and sweet. On some days, it will be as simple as a beautiful image or a little phrase. On others, like today, I’ll need to do a little more explaining. After a couple of years of loss, depression and health issues, I decided to launch a lifeline for myself, a daily search for hope. I’m not talking sugary sweetness. I’m talking artists and community leaders and journalists who are right in the thick of it with the rest of us, grappling with grief and fear and injustice and coming up with something beautiful as a result. I’m talking about the simple wellness ideas that have surrounded me for 15 years now but which I’ve often failed to embrace. Why Costa Rica, besides of course the fact that this is my adopted home? Because I believe this country has something special to give those of us who are walking that line between light and dark, no matter where on the globe we are doing it. Costa Rica is struggling, and it is phenomenal. It is packed with cars and red tape and inequalities, and with innovative, committed people designing solutions. It is awash in apathy and absolutely teeming with creative minds. I dedicate this project to all those who, like me, are veering daily between joy and despair and back again. I dedicate it to all those of us who need a little daily boost to help us keep going: a little calm or beauty or deliciousness, or just something that makes us laugh or think or pause and breathe. Will you join me? Sign up at the link in my bio, tag a friend who might want to come along, and then slide on your rubber boots – it’s raining out. No umbrella required. Let’s wander off through the mud in search of pretty things. Let’s muse and marvel and allow one tiny country to remind us that the world is wide and full of wonders. Still. Always. #costarica #costaricadailyboost #feliz15 #mesdelapatria #amwriting

ONE. Ooh, child, it's been a year. And a year before that. And... but wait! It's the weekend, it's Independence Day Eve, and all of us are alive at the same time as @lizzobeeating and a whole bunch of similarly fearless badasses, a crazy number of whom are right here in Costa Rica. Courage! #costaricadailyboost #costarica #mesdelapatria #yesIamobsessedwithLizzo #howcanyounotbe

TWO. Days left til I start my quest. Costa Rican coffee, I love you so. Please don't ever leave me. #díanacionaldelcafé #costaricadailyboost #comingsunday #costarica #coffee #loveofmyliiiiiiiiiiife

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I write about Costa Rica, parenthood, social justice, and changemakers everywhere – and help others tell their stories.

Costa Rica Daily Boost – Day by Day

September 2019
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