Crazystuff

Linnea Ashley on July 6th, 2013

I’m trying to live a negative of myself. Not so polar opposite that i am unrecognizable, and not because i am harboring some deep disdain for the person i am…but because, as the overused adage goes, “if you always do what you’ve always done you always get what you’ve always gotten.” I’m quite familiar with […]

Continue reading about anti-me

Linnea Ashley on January 14th, 2013

The only part of my Sunday evening that didn’t make me feel like a complete sloth was the end. We did a hanging “beat” from the trapeze. Dangling from my knees, arms straight, it only required me to swing back, arch and swing forward, bending at the waist as high as i could. It was […]

Continue reading about joining the circus

Linnea Ashley on October 26th, 2010

Happily ensconced in skype, I didn’t hear anything until my roommate knocked on my closed bedroom door. I looked up, distracted by my friend talking on the other side of the world. “the guard has caught someone and he’s holding him in the yard.” I smiled and nodded at her. I’m unsure why. It wasn’t […]

Continue reading about safe for the night

Linnea Ashley on September 20th, 2010

September 19, 2010 Iganga Town, Uganda The music meandered from marvin gaye’s sexual healing with a techno beat dropped in, it to shakira’s world cup African anthem. Bubbles O’Leary, one of Kampala’s busiest night spots, was equally diverse. I spent most of the evening trying not to stare as people mingled inexplicably. I say inexplicably […]

Continue reading about bubbles o’leary

Linnea Ashley on April 13th, 2010

The rain came running. I could hear it; feel the wind that carried it, before the first drops fell. I sat pondering time and tadpoles while enjoying the breeze until the rain began to run under the door. Walking to the back of the house where Sierra Leone was napping, rain snuck through the small […]

Continue reading about getting wet

Linnea Ashley on February 16th, 2010

We lost Stanley. After  keeping the pantry door closed against our resident bat on and off for four months we had grown lax. We hadn’t seen Stanley and so assumed he’d moved on to more fruitful pastures. But a few days ago I stumbled to the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning and […]

Continue reading about Bye Stanley, Bye

Linnea Ashley on February 10th, 2010

We almost didn’t stop. The dust, a cloud of cinnamon caught in a sneeze, billowed before us as we raced down the dirt road, gullies carved on either side in anticipation of future rains. We were racing time and honking as pedestrians wandered into what I imagine is usually a deserted strip of road. We […]

Continue reading about birth in the time of driving

Linnea Ashley on November 13th, 2009

The laughter emerging from the back porch was continuous. And loud. Raucous even. Strands of conversation in different voices bounced off the screens and escaped on the cool breeze snaking its way between the mesh – keeping us cool. The “us” was me, BushDiva, Wry-ly, Emme, and Benin*. Emme is an IFESH scholar working in […]

Continue reading about sisters of the yam…er…lentil

Linnea Ashley on October 2nd, 2008

A john in the midst of a service is not what I expected this morning. And by john I mean the kind with his pants down around his ankles not the kind that would give a legal reason to have your pants down around your ankles. But on a slightly gray Thursday morning, when the […]

Continue reading about one john too many

Linnea Ashley on January 16th, 2008

On the phone with my mother, contemplating the dishes that had been sitting in my sink for more than a few days, the shots rang out so clear and loud that I stopped for a split second. Just a second. And then I told my mother I’d call her back and promptly called 911. There […]

Continue reading about 5 shots?