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Devon is Dry

Devon is Dry

August 28, 2022 · by Linda Strange · in England, USA

The rains came after a week of heat. Finally. Thank God. Prior to their arrival it was baking and Devon,…

Letter from St. Croix

Letter from St. Croix

May 30, 2021 · by Linda Strange · in Caribbean

On the north shore of the Caribbean island of St. Croix, two miles before you reach Cane Bay, there lie…

My Cousin in Pittsburgh

My Cousin in Pittsburgh

November 4, 2018 · by Linda Strange · in USA

On October 29th, two days after a gunman burst into a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pa. and shot eleven people dead,…

Hot, Hot, Hot

Hot, Hot, Hot

August 13, 2018 · by Linda Strange · in England, France, USA

You knew it before you got there, knew it if you’re one of those people who checks weather.com before you…

The Future is Now

The Future is Now

April 26, 2018 · by Linda Strange · in Mexico, Syria, USA

If you’d asked me a few years ago, only a few, whether or not I ever read dystopian fiction, I…

Gina

Gina

December 30, 2017 · by Linda Strange · in Italy, USA

Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austro-Hungarian writer who was born, wrote, and died a long time ago. He was most…

The End of the World

The End of the World

September 26, 2017 · by Linda Strange · in Caribbean, England, Mexico, USA

In the nearly twenty years I’ve been teaching in the US public schools, I’ve had quite a few kids walk…

What They Remember

What They Remember

August 19, 2017 · by Linda Strange · in Cape Verde, Trinidad, USA

It’s been the summer of meeting up with former students, students I haven’t seen in more than a decade, a…

Where We Come From

Where We Come From

June 25, 2017 · by Linda Strange · in Czechoslovakia, England, Germany, Hungary, Moravia, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, USA

A family history is a collection of stories, stories told and retold and made old not so much by the…

Spread the Word

Spread the Word

April 22, 2017 · by Linda Strange · in Italy

Venice is a city of illusions: illusions of water and light, of time and space, of stillness and movement. Looking…

Venice

Venice

May 1, 2016 · by Linda Strange · in Italy

Imagine a city where the taxi journey from the airport so satisfies your desire for adventure, your longing for beauty,…

And Now For Something Completely Different

And Now For Something Completely Different

April 3, 2016 · by Linda Strange · in Canada

Take heart, readers! This post will not be yet another cry of dismay over the troubling ascendancy of Donald Trump….

De Ja Vu All Over Again

De Ja Vu All Over Again

March 9, 2016 · by Linda Strange · in Canada, USA

There it was again. That feeling. The feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but that I still…

O Canada

O Canada

November 2, 2015 · by Linda Strange · in Canada

A flash of light rent the October sky, lasted a few short moments, and then vanished as quickly as it…

The Long Walk Across Europe

The Long Walk Across Europe

September 29, 2015 · by Linda Strange · in England, Germany, Greece, Syria

In December of 1933, a young man set out from England on a great adventure. His intention was to walk…

Savannah

Savannah

April 17, 2015 · by Linda Strange · in USA

When I was in the sixth grade, I read Gone with the Wind for the first time. I read it…

Everything Old Is New Again

Everything Old Is New Again

December 13, 2014 · by Linda Strange · in Russia

The summer I traveled to Sweden nearly thirty-five years ago the national news there was full of reports of phantom…

Savages

Savages

October 19, 2014 · by Linda Strange · in England

On the southwestern edge of the Wiltshire Downs in England, in the valley of the River Kennet, lies the ancient…

Letter from England

Letter from England

August 13, 2014 · by Linda Strange · in England

Normally, when you say you’re writing a letter from somewhere that’s where you are, but our time in England was…

Fruits of the Earth

Fruits of the Earth

July 15, 2014 · by Linda Strange · in Canada, Finland

Nadine Gordimer died today, the great South African writer, though I had actually sat down to write about another great…

Westward Ho!

Westward Ho!

May 27, 2014 · by Linda Strange · in USA

Keeping on the travel theme, my husband and I had reason to strike out for California last weekend, and if…

Arrivals and Departures

Arrivals and Departures

April 28, 2014 · by Linda Strange · in Spain

The Dutch novelist, poet and journalist, Cees Nooteboom, wrote a wonderful book called Roads to Santiago. In it, the author…

The Sochi Saga

The Sochi Saga

January 30, 2014 · by Linda Strange · in Russia

You have to feel sorry for the Russian people. Or you don’t have to, not if you don’t want to,…

Christmas in the Caribbean

Christmas in the Caribbean

December 26, 2013 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

Christmas Eve in Bequia is a day of frenzied shopping, for unlike up in the States, no stores down here…

Road trips

Road trips

October 17, 2013 · by Linda Strange · in Russia

Crumbling provincial towns, the Gypsy wedding of a fourteen year old, the dismal condition of the M10 which connects Petersburg…

One if by Land

One if by Land

July 14, 2013 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

So, we went up to Boston, my husband and I, about three months after the Boston bombings and found the…

Hopscotch

Hopscotch

June 25, 2013 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

You remember the 1980 movie “Hopscotch,” don’t you? Walter Matthau played a rogue CIA agent who was publishing a book…

Stockholm’s Burning

Stockholm’s Burning

May 28, 2013 · by Linda Strange · in Sweden

Stockholm’s burning. That city I went to 33 years ago as an exchange student in the summer of 1980, that…

Waiter, There's a Horse in My Soup

Waiter, There’s a Horse in My Soup

March 8, 2013 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

You really have to feel sorry for the French. No matter how bad things ever got over there, no matter…

Island Of the Clouds

Island Of the Clouds

December 31, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

Let me just get it over with and explain where it is we are. On an island called Bequia which…

School Days

School Days

October 17, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

So the Taliban are now shooting girls who want to go to school, are they? Not that this is really…

First Aid

First Aid

October 3, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Russia, USA

On September 18th, the US government announced that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), after two decades of…

September 11th

September 11th

September 19, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in USA

And so another anniversary of the September 11th bombing of the World Trade Center has come and gone replete with…

Spanish Flames

Spanish Flames

September 5, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Spain

As if they needed anything else to go wrong, the country of Spain has this last week been battling yet…

Washington in Botswana

Washington in Botswana

August 29, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Finland

What do you think would happen if someone produced a film about George Washington filmed in Botswana with a local…

Carcassonne: Land of the Cathars

Carcassonne: Land of the Cathars

August 1, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in France

One summer when I was about ten years old, my mother went to the library to get some novels for…

Aragonese Pyrenees: What Spanish Crisis?

Aragonese Pyrenees: What Spanish Crisis?

July 25, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Spain

There are fires to the east of us in Catalonia after one of the driest winters on record in the…

Big Ben in a rainy London

London Calling

July 18, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in England

It’s raining in London. What a surprise. Yes, but it’s been raining for a long time, practically the whole summer…

Summer Solstice

Summer Solstice

June 27, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Finland, Sweden, USA

What do you mean the summer’s over? Why it just started didn’t it? I only got out of school last…

Russian Reformers Old and New

Russian Reformers Old and New

June 20, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Russia

The demands of the Russian reformers seemed reasonable enough to me. They wanted the Russian government to stop being so…

Midsummer in Scandinavia

Midsummer in Scandinavia

June 13, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Finland

“Make hay while the sun shines.” The phrase always had a lascivious ring to it for me. It suggested someone…

Juneteenth

Juneteenth

June 6, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Germany, USA

Juneteenth is an African-American holiday officially celebrated in 41 states of the United States. It commemorates the final abolition of…

Don't Go to Gibraltar!

Don’t Go to Gibraltar!

May 23, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

“Whatever you do, don’t go to Gibraltar.” This was what our friends and neighbors down on the Costa del Sol…

Fascinators Forever

Fascinators Forever

May 16, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

I’m going to a wedding in England this summer and I’m pretty pleased about it. Of course, I’ll be happy…

Bilbao on the Baltic?

Bilbao on the Baltic?

May 11, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Finland

The Helsinki City Council has finally decided. No Guggenheim for them, thank you very much. The city of Helsinki, chosen…

Blame the Germans

Blame the Germans

May 7, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Germany

They’ve been muttering about them in Greece, and in Spain, in Portugal and in Italy. All the countries of Europe…

Haavisto Loses, Finland Wins

Haavisto Loses, Finland Wins

March 11, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Finland

Back in January, the Finns had an election, too. It was the first round of their presidential election. The Finns,…

Author

Portrait photo of Linda Strange

All countries are strange, none stranger than your own.

January 2023
I am delighted to announce that Glass Mountain Literary Magazine has published my short story Retention in their current issue. You can read the story here.
September 2022
Watch a video of me reading a live version of a blog about the Berlin Wall, The Wall I Knew.
July 2022
Watch a video of me reading a live version of my blog, The Last of the Best.
May 2022
I’m excited to announce three pieces of my writing have recently been published. What Ever Happened to Igor, an essay in Pangyrus, is about a study trip I took to Ukraine in 1985 with a group of Finns and Swedes. Igor was a young Ukrainian-Swedish man from Stockholm who was going to meet his father in Kyiv, a father he hadn’t seen in twenty years. Want to watch a video of me reading the essay? Click here. Will They Make it Home Again?, another essay in Pangyrus, explores the relationship between the images of World War Two childhood evacuations recorded in select works of European literature and the images of evacuation we now see on our television screens from Ukraine. Click here to watch the video.
Finally, The Longest Day, is a short story published in the 2022 Freshwater Literary Journal. It details the experience of a young non-English speaking Cape Verdean girl, Gee, on her first day in an American inner-city school. It is an account of Gee’s first encounter with her new ESL teacher and the safe space this teacher creates for Gee to express her true emotions. Watch a You Tube video of me speaking with Georbina DaRosa, the real-life inspiration for my story.

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