I spent my elementary school vacations at my best friend’s home in Los Angeles, California. We grew up in Historic Filipinotown, an enclave home to the city’s first wave of immigrants from the Philippines. Her home had avocado and orange trees, abundant kudzu, and plenty […]

A TULSI IN THE LOTUS On a visit to Goa, a coastal town in India, I kept seeing tulsi vrindavanas on the streets that I walked. Many of them were lotus-shaped. Tulsi vrindavanas are raised stone, brick or plaster structures, generally placed in the courtyards […]

On a sunny July morning some time in the future, a group of high-spirited citizens are arguing with city officials in the gardens of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. The subject of the argument is a tree; a chestnut marked with a big red painted circle, occupying […]