Abobe Stock photo (Stockbym) Day by day, I scroll through social media, gazing at photos of Paris. The Paris I see in these glossy portfolios is my Paris. And, again, it’s not. I see few images of the banlieues, Belleville, Drancy, the blocks of high rises flanking the highway from Charles De Gaulle airport to … More Dreaming the Mythical France: Paris

Long-time readers of this blog know that my love of Latin America sprang first from my college major in Latin American Studies. Food played no part in the formal curriculum but on the ground in Mexico – Mexico City, Veracruz, Mérida in the Yucatán – as a student in Puebla, I discovered a whole new … More Latinísimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of Latin America, by Sandra A. Gutierrez 

Lately, life seems to be sending me cryptic messages, imbued with a tinge of mortality, infused with the sense of time passing all too quickly. Today, all I can say, all I can think of comes through in Mary Oliver’s “The Wild Geese.” The aura of the poem calls me to remember to stop and … More “Wild Geese,” Mary Oliver’s Paean to Hope

I was one of those children who’d happily go to bed at whatever ungodly hour my parents wanted us four kids to. Because that meant I could read until my eyelids sagged or the flashlight batteries died, whatever came first. Of course, I’d be cat-tired the next, yearning for a nice warm quilt and sunny … More The Nightingale: A Novel, by Kristin Hannah