New Bio GENEVIEVE SHAPIRO NEE WILSON CARTOONIST, ESQ. AT LARGE and AT YOUR SERVICE.
The City Chapter:
"Cities I have lived in, and one personal favorite and one unfavorite thing about each. An assignment for my inner teacher. "
Ann Arbor, MI, USA: Plus: Little fairy doors are appearing around town, stashed at sidewalk level in various business. A2 is the kind of place where no one minds if you get down on your face to look in the tiny fanlight windows to inspect the furniture inside the rooms. Minus: Idiots in SUVS waving tribal football flags and choking the streets on game days. But maybe that's just me.
Valle De La Pascua, Venezuela:Plus: Cafe con leche, and sweetbreads in the shape of turtles with candied fruits for eyes (I was a kid then, you can tell, yes?). Minus: rats that can jump as high as the hammock. I've seen it happen.
Dhaka, Bangladesh:Plus: The perfect reflections on the surfaces of water-filled fields and slow rivers. Minus: Fish curry. Egg curry. Curried Fish. Curried Eggs. And curried other stuff too. Sorry, curry lovers.
Chapel Hill, NC, USA:Plus: Killer Kudzu Minus: Killer Kudzu
Cairo, Egypt: Plus: Ropes of jasmine flowers for sale in the streets at intersections. Minus: Pollution
Freiburg, (Then West) Germany:Plus: Cake and coffee at three o'clock for everyone, no exceptions. Minus: Mean old ladies armed with well-made German umbrellas.
Lome, Togo:Plus: Groves of tall trees with bare ground beneath them, making the outdoors feel like a palace full of light. Minus: Roadside zoos.
Columbus, OH, USA: Plus: Studio 35 Cinema on Indianola - double features for cheap, good bar and real food, plus it's a single-screen place with lots of red velvet. The game is to try to identify what the two films you see have in common. I liked to go there alone, and I never got hassled. Minus: Dudes stashing sidearms in my front yard under the bushes, closely pursued by cop cars and helicopters. But maybe that's just me.
Taipei, Taiwan:Plus: Fantastic mountain glens, waterfalls, cliffs, and shorelines. I learned to rappel at Wego school's outdoor program on Yang Ming Shan. Minus: The use of star anise in food.
Boston, MA, USA: Plus:The singing bicycle courier - he only does Top Forty, but he does it while negotiating traffic, so props to him. Minus: well, everyone hates the big dig, so i'll be different and say the fa ct that the trains are underfunded and overcrowded, and yet Bostonians don't see that as a reason to give more money to public transportation. They just go on dumping money into the highways. So, i guess it does come back to the Big Dig after all.
And because you probably need a hug, here's one from me. ****
