HeyJaredPostcards from the Center of the Universe
Life as an expat in Panama, viewing the world through an inquisitive lens, and exploring geopolitics, culture, music, food, fascinating people, post-midlife reinvention, and the quest for a better life.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 12
- Latest publication
- Sep 23, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 14, 2026
Latest issues
A Love Letter to My Neighborhood (opens the original)
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Shortly after my birth 56 years ago, Stephen Stills released a song that, to my knowledge, didn’t enter my consciousness for another 18 years, when I was a freshman in college and the tune seemed to be on the jukebox’s regular rotation in the bowels of the dining hall—an area set aside for mailboxes, ping pong, and billiards. Parented by Boomers, I was well steeped in the music of Crosby, Stills, & Nash (and sometimes Young). After all, ours was a very, very, very fine house. Yet the song I’m re
Mid-Week Musings (opens the original)
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By the time you’re reading this, we’ll be recovering from a red-eye flight to Macondo York. If you don’t know where that is, I direct you to my previous post about our six-day journey through Panama’s International Book Fair. And if you want a good laugh over how I humiliated myself in front of a room of very powerful women at the same event, such that I had to curl up into a ball on the floor, I refer you to this post. <hr
My Completely Reasonable Six-Day Book-Fair Obsession (opens the original)
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Before last week, I would have thought myself an unlikely candidate to attend six straight days of a book festival. I’ve only been to a handful of such events, most notably the 2019 Sun Valley Writers Conference, where I took in 3 days of talks with literary luminaries like Dave Eggers, Martin Amis, Alice McDermott, Abraham Verghese, Carl Hiaasen, and Kwame Anthony Appiah. For more than 30 years, it’s been hottest ticket in town—hard to come by and hard on the wallet. I got in by pouncing on a d
The Patriarchy Assumes a Seat in the Front Row (opens the original)
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Read time: 5 minutesThis is a brief tale about how a talk at Panama’s International Book Fair—one that I was really looking forward to—became a very uncomfortable hour, physically and psychologically.It was Day 5 of the event (I’m working on a longer piece that will go out in the next 48 hours) and I had mapped out a plan that included four different sessions on this Saturday afternoon. Included in the list was “Derechos Humanos de la Mujer: Visión Histórica y Actualidad” (The Human Rights of Wo
The Hotel That Offers a Panamanian Passport (opens the original)
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I’ve made allusions in the past to the Relocation Guru Industrial Complex—a facetious name for a mostly unsophisticated yet growing array of “mom and pop” businesses and consultants who operate side by side with more established and highly capitalized players. Most target North Americans contemplating their “Plan B,” which takes various shapes depending… Read more
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