December 1978 Vacation December of 1978, my husband Tom and I headed down to the DR for Christmas vacation. We were both attending Tyler School of art in Philadelphia.The journey to the DR every vacation started with a train ride to New York City. Then a...
As soon as my parents got together again, my mother became pregnant. It seems every time they got back together, there was a new baby. My mother was about 5 months pregnant when she and my father went out for a drive. My father didn’t see a speed bump (in the DR they...
My Parents Rafael Alberto Arvelo Gonzalez and Ysabel María Irene Dalmau Pichardo My mother was the daughter of Alfredo Dalmau Rijo and Diana Pichardo Martinez. My mother’s father was a tycoon, who, among other things, represented and distributed Sinclair Oil Company...
Living in Puerto Rico On June 13th, 1961, thirteen days after the death of Trujillo, the despot that had ruled the Dominican Republic for 32 years, we left for San Juan Puerto Rico. For 10 years, my family had been on the enemy-of-the-state list. My father had spent...
The Altos Years Altos de Chavón was an artist village located on the edge of the Chavón River in La Romana, Dominican Republic. I say “was” because it is not longer an artist village. When the Fanjul Corp bought it from Gulf & Western, they...
Word Paintings Post by Tom Buzbee I am a painter. Not completely successful and certainly not a failure. My work is good but I feel I could have gone farther. I am definitely not a writer. I have, at times, flirted with putting a few words together in a sentence, or a...
