In the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. We trace the first Thanksgiving dinner to a poorly documented 1621 celebration in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Tradition, not necessarily history, tells us that the Pilgrims and Native Americans sat down to a rich harvest feast. It had been a harsh and challenging winter, …
My sister-out-law and her family visited the US during the Halloween season and fell in love with it. Halloween is not big in Australia, but I love the holiday and I can’t let it pass me by without some celebration. We invited the family over for an afternoon of Halloween pumpkin carving followed by dinner. Field …
A spooky holiday in spring? Australians don’t celebrate Halloween as much as Americans, but it’s catching on. I celebrate it every year.
American individualism and Australian mateship make two similar countries very different. I’ve written before about the little differences between Miami and Melbourne. It’s hard to make generalisations because the United States and Australia are both large countries with different regional cultures, political and social ideologies, and state laws. Life is very different in New York, Georgia, …
One thing I love about Melbourne is the blend the old and the new, its historical architecture alongside or even inside contemporary structures. Melbourne was founded in 1835, more than 250 years after the first Spanish mission was constructed in Miami. You don’t see many old buildings in Miami. There are some notable exceptions particularly …
It’s the anniversary of the Mariel boatlift. On a day like today, 20 May 1980, my family arrived in the United States. Between April and September 1980, 125,000 Cubans arrived in Florida from the port of El Mariel, in a dramatic boatlift that had long-standing repercussions for the United States and for Castro’s image. It …