Dori Griffin is a designer and design historian interested in popular print culture and the narrative construction of social and cultural identity. Her first book, Mapping Wonderlands: Illustrated Cartography of Arizona, 1912-1962, explores tourist maps and the stories they tell about the state’s history, landscape and culture.

Dori has also studied culture through looking at covers of vintage science fiction novels and Japanese travel brochures. She has an MFA in graphic design from the University of Florida and a phD in design history from Arizona State University, so her work has both an academic and hands-on component. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida’s School of Art and Art History, and one of her favourite parts about teaching is seeing the amazing things her students create.

I first met Dori when we were both sixteen-year-old homeschoolers looking for a pen-pal, and although we’ve never met in person, we’ve been pen-pals ever since. She grew up in Chattanooga Tennessee, but her academic life has taken her around the United States. She recently moved to Florida and bought her very first house, which she moved into just hours before coronavirus lockdown began.

I talk with Dori about her work finding meaning in material as different as maps and the covers of science fiction novels, what lockdown is like with just her, her cat Milo and all her Zoom classes, and her resolve to ‘use the fine China’, meaning the objects and useful items family and friends have gifted her in her new home.

DORI GRIFFIN ELSEWHERE

Dori’s first book: Mapping Wonderlands: Illustrated Cartography of Arizona, 1912-1962: https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/mapping-wonderlands

Her faculty profile at the University of Florida: https://arts.ufl.edu/directory/profile/166907

Follow Dori’s beautiful Instagram feed for interesting design and typography tidbits, and SO MANY lovely photos of Florida flora: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_uZlMhFUeU/

You can also follow her amazing students in the Graphic Design and Design & Visual Communications Programs at the University of Florida:

https://www.instagram.com/ufdesigners/

This episode features music by Meydän under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Podcast produced by Sarah Bringhurst Familia on the canals of Amsterdam.

Ana Martins has been a local in Amsterdam for several years, but originally comes from Portugal. Amsterdam, she says, is the first place that has ever felt like home. She has been an actress and yoga teacher, and now writes a blog called Amsterdive exploring her own relationship with Amsterdam and the Netherlands while focusing on arts and culture, creative living, sustainability and self-development.

Ana talks about her parents, who grew up Portuguese in Mozambique, her own quest to find home in Amsterdam, and what she loves about the city.

Ana is currently undergoing active treatment for cancer, and during our interview she shares her journey toward healing, what she has learned along the way, and how it feels to be a cancer patient during a pandemic. We talk about how coronavirus and lockdown have impacted her, and what she wishes people knew about cancer in the time of corona, and how we can take care of the vulnerable among us.

ANA MARTINS ELSEWHERE

Follow Ana’s blog, Amsterdive, for cultural happenings in the city, musings on Amsterdam life and other stories. Especially be sure to read her recent post on What surviving cancer taught me about racism: https://amsterdive.com/2020/06/15/what-surviving-cancer-taught-me-about-racism/.

Photos courtesy of Ana Martins.

This episode features music by Meydän under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Podcast produced by Sarah Bringhurst Familia on the canals of Amsterdam.

Erica Eastley has lived an adventurous life in several different countries in Central Asia, the Middle East and beyond. We’ve never met in person; in fact, I think I first came across Erica when I stumbled on her fascinating blog, The Golden Road to Samarqand, where she was explaining how she cut the bindings off all her books and scanned them so she could take their contents with her abroad, which I found equal parts intriguing and horrifying.

Erica discusses growing up amongst a family that still lives in the same house as when she was a baby, but knowing from very young that she wanted something else. She talks about why Central Asia and Cairo both feel like home to her, when Saudi Arabia and Mexico did not. She tells us what’s going on with the pandemic in Egypt, what has changed and what hasn’t, and how she is trying to help the refugees she works with make it through this difficult time.

ERICA ELSEWHERE

Follow Erica’s long-running blog for more on her adventures in Cairo and beyond: http://amiralace.blogspot.com/

Photos courtesy of Erica Eastley.

This episode features music by Meydän under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Podcast produced by Sarah Bringhurst Familia on the canals of Amsterdam.

Rowena Dring is British, and spent time in Berlin and France before settling here in Amsterdam. She is an artist who challenges traditional boundaries by incorporating the traditional ‘women’s work’ of sewing and needlework with large-scale painting. She first started this type of art after her father died, and observes that ‘when you feel like your world has been shattered apart, actually working with collage, putting things back together with sewing and stitching is a way of reordering your world.’

We live in a world that, if not shattered apart, has been irrevocably changed. I talk to Rowena about how the resurgence of the traditional homemaking arts may be a natural response to that change, incorporating as they do the comfort of simple things like the whirr of the sewing machine or the smell of freshly baked bread. During lockdown, Rowena herself has recently put some of her same artistic techniques to work making wonderful, quirky face masks. She has also baked sourdough bread for many years. We discuss why we are drawn to these types of homemaking arts during a pandemic, and what they can do for us.

ROWENA ELSEWHERE:

Monica Perez Vega did an interview with Rowena on the very first episode of the Hiraeth Magazine Podcast, which you can find here: http://hiraethmagazine.com/hiraeth-magazine-podcast-ep-1-meet-the-team-part-i/

You can buy her unique, beeswaxed cotton canvas face masks (along with her paintings) in her webshop: https://www.rowenadring.com/shop

Or follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-zQ3lxF6ui/

This episode features music by Meydän under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Podcast produced by Sarah Bringhurst Familia on the canals of Amsterdam.

‘Emily’ is an American, but grew up moving around a lot, and spent her teenage years living in Mexico. Now with four kids of her own, she has made the move to Saudi Arabia to give them a taste of international life. We have changed her name so she can speak freely about her adventures and what life is like in Saudi.

‘Emily’ tells us what it’s like being a woman in a country where her husband has to sign off on her every decision, from how to landscape the front yard to each and every withdrawal she wants to make from their joint bank account. And she talks about what life is like during the pandemic under 24-hour curfew, and what she misses most about the time when she was allowed to go further from her house than the garbage bin alley.

Photo courtesy of ‘Emily’.

This episode features music by Meydän under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Podcast produced by Sarah Bringhurst Familia on the canals of Amsterdam.

Lisa Ferland is an American living in Sweden. She has a background in public health, and is also an author and consultant. In the podcast she talks about her life in the Swedish countryside, why she chose to take Swedish citizenship, and what being both Swedish and American means to her.

Lisa recently began working for the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), specifically on the coronavirus pandemic. We talk with her about how the Swedish approach to the pandemic differs from what other countries are doing, and how cultural differences affect the way the coronavirus progresses in different places. Lisa gives us a peek at what we might be able to expect in the coming months, and a few rays of hope about what good might come out of all this.

LISA ELSEWHERE:

You can listen to our previous interview with Lisa about her book, Knocked Up Abroad, here: http://hiraethmagazine.com/podcast-episode-18-knocked-up-abroad/

Lisa runs a consulting business helping authors to crowdfund their books: https://lisaferland.com/

Follow her on Instagram for a glimpse at the beautiful Swedish outdoor life:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9Yk_m2njsH/

This episode features music by Meydän under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Podcast produced by Sarah Bringhurst Familia on the canals of Amsterdam.