#ex pat

Perhaps she comes to your attention because she is having adjustment problems, like any other new kid on the block. She isn’t making friends easily, doesn’t join group activities. She is withdrawn, uncooperative, angry or disruptive. Or maybe she’s been diagnosed and labeled, but it doesn’t seem to explain everything.

She doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t know where to begin.

What you don’t know and can’t see is that she is a Third Culture Kid (TCK) — a child who has moved in and out of foreign countries as her parents have transferred around the world. Born into one culture, raised among others, her identity is most closely aligned with others raised like her, moving internationally. She is not “from” anywhere. Although she was born here, for her this country is another foreign assignment. Feeling out of place is only the tip of the iceberg. She is struggling through yet another adaptation, another culture shock, another freefall.

Fritz Melbye (Aug. 24, 1826 - 1869) was a Danish marine painter, like his better-known brothers Vilhelm and Anton Melbye. Unlike them, Fritz spent most of his life abroad - in the Caribbean, South America, Canada and the US. He had his own studio in New York. Late in life he traveled widely in Asia, esp. Japan and China. He set up a new studio in Beijing, but died a few years later in Shanghai.

During the turbulent time after the emancipation of the slaves in the Danish West Indies (now the Virgin Islands) in 1848, Melbye lived in St. Thomas, and painted numerous canvases depicting the harbor scenery and life on the plantations. In 1854 he witnessed the emancipation of the slave population in Venezuela, where he had moved with his student, Camille Pissaro. Melbye seems to not have been interested in the plight of the black population, although some farm laborers can be seen in a few of his canvases.

Instead he presented a rather idyllic life in the West Indies, as this canvas of the port of Charlotte Amalie, seen from the sea side.

Perúvian Mountain Central Railway:

El Ferrocarril Central Andino (FCCA) locomotora #1024 rests the radiators — running dynamic brakes down to sea-level from the rare air of the Ándes mountains. The summit has no snowsheds, and only a ¾-mile tunnel, but at 15,807 ft — and, yes, 15,807 feet is 3-freaking-miles!!! — this is real railroading that demands every bit as much of a work ethic as the hard pull through Walong. Ever the hard-working lady, FCCA #1024, nee-SP tunnelmotor #8382, shows what a classically configured SD40T-2 looks like to be still pulling strong after all these years.