Last year November my friend Pedro and I attended a U.S. election watching event in De Melkweg, a cultural center in Amsterdam. We were interviewed by city newspaper Het Parool about our expectations of the outcome. The reporter quoted me saying that “of course” I expected Clinton to win, “given the options.” How wrong I…
Category: Trump America
Life In Trump America
The election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States has laid bare one of the fiercest divides the country has ever experienced. In this “New USA” it has become difficult to separate truth from fiction. In the Spring of 2017 I traveled for three months across eleven U.S. states to ask Americans about their life, dreams and aspirations. They weighed in with their views on the heated political climate or shared their personal stories of love and loss. Before my trip I also interviewed several Americans living in the Netherlands and Dutchies ln the U.S. about how they perceive life in a Trump America. Their “EUSAstories” are part of this category as well.
The Dam That Divides
The American consciousness is not at peace with its Native American history. To learn more about this sobering situation, I traveled east from Portland on the I-84 to The Dalles, a rural community of cherry growers and wheat farmers, situated on the mighty Columbia River in Oregon. There I met with two young members of…
Not So Different From Dad
After having said goodbye to my Dutch friend Jon at SFO airport I left San Francisco to head north. For two weeks we had explored the Californian coast, gotten neck cramps from staring at giants in Sequioa National Park and defied the mist of Yosemite’s mega waterfalls. Now it was solo travel time again. For…
Love Lost, Life Won
Huguette Pretty – friends call her “Pretty”– is an aesthetician and special effects makeup artist from San Diego. Her Italian dad and Mexican mom instilled in her a sense of spirituality and appreciation of life. Also, her parents’ epic love story turned her into a hopeless romantic. But where their mutual adoration sustained a loving…
Generous Orthodoxy
He has 30k followers on Twitter, his own video and podcast series, and he writes about religion, race and sexuality for The Washington Post and The Guardian. Broderick L. Greer is one Reverend that doesn’t shy away from the public debate. I went to hear him preach twice at two different churches before we sat…
“Memphis Creeps Into Your Soul”
Memphis breathes space, music and relaxation. Throw in great food, friendly folks and heaps of history and you’ve got a place worth lingering for. And that’s what I did, for about ten days. It felt good not having to pack up again after two or three nights. I guess I just needed to stay put…
How Trump Cut Off Minority Rule
The city of Asheville is a cultural hotspot in Western North Carolina. There are buskers on every street corner, a vibrant art scene and multiple live music venues. Asheville is also the seat of one of only a handful of counties in North Carolina that voted in majority – fifty-five percent – for Hillary Clinton…
From Surplus Store To Tootsie’s Town
After detouring via the Jack Daniel’s distillery in Lynchburg, I arrive in Nashville around four p.m. It had crossed my mind to skip the Tennessee capital and drive straight from Chattanooga to Memphis, but I couldn’t resist the name and fame of the self-proclaimed “City of Music”. I park for free up the hill south…