Rick Turoczy

…ices and a gallery that was featuring the gorgeous art of nonbinary artist Caroline Wells Chandler. We walked around Montmartre and went to a fancy store where a security guard racially profiled me because there is no vacation from racism, and my wife chewed him up and then we were being served drinks and there was an apology. We saw a …

…ices and a gallery that was featuring the gorgeous art of nonbinary artist Caroline Wells Chandler. We walked around Montmartre and went to a fancy store where a security guard racially profiled me because there is no vacation from racism, and my wife chewed him up and then we were being served drinks and there was an apology. We saw a cabaret show, beautiful women, topless even! And then, the trip came to an end and we were…

…e and imbibed a dozen glasses of wine between us and ate the most perfect pasta we had ever tasted. The restaurant was on the second floor of a building with no elevator and when I realized this, I was going to say I would wait in the car, but then I thought I might give it a try. It was an unremarkable ascent, another reminder that I was not living in the body I thought I was living in, that my body was as capable as I allowed it to be. At another winery, we learned about how wine was made and how balsamic vinegar was made and oh, how…

From one city to the next, my world opened up more and more and I started to understand just how big and beautiful the world is. We very liberally drank our way through the Tuscan countryside. Our driver, a very enterprising you…

… Would I be able to step down into the boat? Would I fall and humiliate myself? Would people stare? Living in a fat body means you are in constant conversation with yourself, managing the anxieties that rise out of a fatphobic world that wants you to believe you don’t deserve to live a full and joyful life. Living in a somewhat less but still fat body means not knowing what your changing body is capable o…

…king, actually walking, for miles, in the sun, hot and sweaty, but keeping up, making conversation. My body was doing things I never thought would be possible and were it not for the joy of the experience, I might have cried.

take flash pho…re are air lock chambers on your way in and out. You can’t get too close or take flash photography. And still, at the center of all these reminders of the realities of the world, there is this surreal masterpiece, hundreds of years old, a work of art that has withstood war and calamity and neglect.

From one city to the next, my world opened up more and more and I started to understand just how big and beautiful the world is.

…representative responded, I outlined an ideal itinerary involving several Italian cities and Paris. I’m a writer, after all, and not immune to cliché so of course I needed to visit Paris and sit in a café with a notebook and a fresh baguette, looking writerly. When I finally got to Paris I never managed to sit in a café with a notebook, but oh did I enjoy a …

Inclusivity increases economic productivity in entrepreneurship ecosystems. The equal allocation of resources (all else considered) should be accessible to all entrepreneurs r…