Kristina’s Blog

Kristina’s Blog

Happy New (Tango) Year!

Have you always (ever?) wanted to learn to dance tango? This is your year in Bend! Besides our inspiring and dynamic Wednesday evening teachers, Tyler Haas and Emma James, Tango Aficionados of Bend are welcoming internationally respected Argentine Social Tango...

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Oh (Tango In) Canada

Back in January 2017, still reeling from our U.S. election results, I posted my intention to visit Canada, after a long absence, for a fresh perspective. In December, I finally made it to Victoria, B.C. on Vancouver Island, in two short flying hops from Bend via...

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Reading At Roundabout Books

Reading From Here to Argentina: A Tango Love Story at Roundabout Books in Bend's NW Crossing Friday evening was a joy. I love reading to a live audience and meeting other writers and readers.  Thanks to Cassie of Roundabout Books for all she does to...

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From Here to Argentina: A Tango Love Story

My new book, From Here to Argentina: A Tango Love Story, began with my dreaming a song I'd never heard before. It played in my memory when I forgot the dream itself."Odd," I thought. "Who would sing a song like that?" Fictional characters, in my writing experience,...

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Be the Light

"In dark times be the light." I don't know who I'm quoting, so many wise people have said this. As we pass through these dark times, let's put the emphasis on the verb. Everything passes. We have choices in how we ride it out. My immigrant grandmother Anna was a great...

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Radical Action

"This doesn't feel like my country anymore," a friend told me over brunch in a Manhattan vegan restaurant, while a young man with a shiny lip ring and no eyebrows above his lettuce-green eyes sweetly served our black bean enchiladas with cashew cheese. I understood...

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Reality of Impossible Things

Today I celebrate the Festival of Archangel Uriel who visited me, an angel skeptic who had never heard Uriel's name, nearly two decades ago. I had no interest in, nor any familiarity with, archangels in any form then, much less the twenty-foot-tall winged being made...

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Mourning and Morning

This winter after my mother died was long and bleak, though in "reality" no longer or bleaker than others. I'm returning from that darkness with my first note of 2016 and one last story about my mother. She left me a gift I dreaded and saw at first as a curse: ninety...

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What Do Angels Look Like?

Those of you who filled my studio for Sandra Kunz's November presentation about her Qigong trip to China may have noticed the recurring angel theme in my paintings on the walls. Or maybe not, given that Sandra kept us all fascinated with her stories. That's how it is...

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©Copyright 2023 Kristina bak

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Artist and Author of From Here to Argentina: A Tango Love Story, Nowever and Cold Mirage.

Author photos by Jill Rosell