About Elena Karplus

Halloween was not celebrated in Argentina when I was growing up. The only dress-up holiday we took part in was “Carnival,” which takes place in February, right in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer…
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Miami has lovely malls and one of them, the Shops at Merrick Park, is a few blocks away from my house. I could walk there if I lived in a normal “walking” city, but the reality is that in this town, much like in Los Angeles, nobody walks…
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Not all hurricanes are created equal, but in Miami, we take all of them very seriously, especially since August 16, 1992, when Hurricane Andrew devastated our city. After being in self-isolation since March, it was alarming for me…
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It was my father who encouraged me to “write about it” when he gave me that first pink and turquoise diary when I was 10 years old. You know the kind, the ones with a little lock and key that hold a young girl’s many secrets…
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I’ve been a bit of an insomniac lately. Possibly because my life, like the lives of most citizens of the world, has been turned upside down by this pandemic. Nondescript days flow into nights of wondering how it got dark so fast…
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Yesterday, I was on the phone with my sister, who lives and is quarantined in Buenos Aires. She was complaining that so many different things around the house needed fixing. As she was telling me about her broken electric oven…
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I think of myself as a “post-menopausal artist.” I was a little over 60 when I surprised myself and started painting. I walked into an art supplies store and bought some acrylic paint, paper, and brushes…
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The realization that I was going to be known as “a widow” was one of the aftershocks of losing my husband. The power of the word itself, the images and feelings…
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Growing up in Buenos Aires, where summer days are hot and endless, “Siesta Time” got us kids out of the pool or away from the sprinklers and into a cool and quiet house…
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I am not a good bed partner. Well, maybe I should say that I have never been a good sleeping partner. I need full and absolute possession of the bed. I move, I squirm, I sigh and sometimes…
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