Category Archives: photo-romans

THE TASTE OF PIG by Peter Nolan Smith

February 24, 2021 – 8:56 am

My great-grandaunt Bert circumnavigated the world on her father?s whaling ship in the 1870s. In 1960 National Geographic published a story about her childhood travels and at her 101st birthday the old Yankee lady related tales of seeing the black-toothed betel-nut chewers of Indonesia and joining tiger hunts on Java. The only two other family […]

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Charleroi, A Thing Of Beauty

January 29, 2021 – 12:29 am

For the centuries Luxembourg served as a barrier against the invading armies of Northern Europe. The city was surrounded by the thickly forested Ardennes and massive fortifications topped sheer cliffs, allowing hundreds of troops foil the attack of thousands. Militarists called the citadel the Gibraltar of the North and in the autumn of 2011 I […]

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Poetry In the Ruins

January 28, 2021 – 7:42 pm

Industrial ruins haunt both sides of the Hudson River. Tall chimneys mark them from a distance. On this winter morning no one is there but me. Walls stand as tombstones. They act as grafitti billboards For my eyes only. Black is our safe shadow. Scream into her earth and cry. Protect with unconditional love. Hold […]

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ROUGH ROAD by Peter Nolan Smith

November 18, 2020 – 12:18 pm

Peru was under siege in 1995. The War of Drugs had replaced the War against the Shining Path. The capitol city Lima was cool, but I had unsuccessfully spent the better part of two days trying to score a bag of cocaine. The airport police fingered me as a user and an undercover squad tailed […]

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The Road To Umphang – Thailand’s Death Highway

November 13, 2020 – 6:03 am

Umphang in Tak Province has long been Thailand’s most remote province. Well in the 20th Century the only access to the region was by pack horse, ox-cart or on foot. In the late 60s the Thai government financed construction of road through the perilous mountains only to have rebels kill thirty construction workers. The other […]

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