Chris Van Mierlo is a South African of British descent who left the country with her family in 1960 when her father was in danger of being arrested by the white government because of his anti-apartheid activities. She has lived in the St. Louis, Missouri, area since 1969, and previously lived on Cape Cod, in Boston, and in Syracuse, New York. Chris teaches and tutors English at St. Charles Community College. In addition to her English degree, she has degrees in music, which she has also taught. Her home away from home is Montana where she and her husband hope to retire in the not too distant future. Chris is the mother of two sons, one of whom lives in St. Louis and the other in Missoula, Montana. She is the grandmother of two girls, 10 and 16.
A couple of summers ago, my husband and I attended a wedding that took place just outside Missoula, Montana, where one of our sons lives. The groom is an incredibly nice man whose family is from India. He and his family are Christian, not Hindu. His uncle, who participated in the wedding ceremony, is a [...]
[Note: I wrote this piece in 2003, shortly before the U.S. invaded Iraq].
The trouble with writing these opinion pieces is they require such intense emotional energy to write. It’s a very exhausting business. But then, so is life these days. We all go about our lives quite admirably, but the low hum of threat, the [...]
It’s been a long week, and it’s only Tuesday.
As my bio indicates, I work at a community college. I teach English and am a writing tutor in our campus learning center, which not only provides help with writing, but with math, science, and foreign languages. We are a multipurpose facility although the individual [...]
Ever since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, there has been a fairly constant refrain heard in the United States. Americans, who once thought their country invulnerable, their culture beyond reproach and their global image impeccable, are asking, “Why do they hate us?” Human emotion being what it is, there is no single or simple [...]
I haven’t seen Hotel Rwanda. I actually rented the movie, and my husband and I started to watch it, but we had to stop. We knew what was going to happen, and we didn’t want to see it: we would have known what was going to happen even if we hadn’t had advance knowledge of [...]
