Sometimes You Do Want American Food in France
Most of it can be rebuilt. Some of it should just be left behind .
Latest
The Market Before the Last of Everyone Disappears
Small melons, quail eggs that were already gone, peaches at their peak, the smell of smoke in the distance & a town on the verge of stopping completely
How to Find Power When You Have None
A recording from Keith Christiansen's live video
You Cannot Set a Timeline for Belonging
A conversation with Valerie Rivera about friendship, daily life, and becoming known in France
My Own Private Idaho, Which I Share With You
New York conversation styles, teaching, learning French, and a lifetime of detours became the way I write
Conversations: When France Stops Being the Main Story
A conversation with Betty Carlson about language, belonging, small-town France, changing friendships, bureaucracy, and the point when living abroad simply becomes living
The Part Right After the Last Part You Said
How to lose your place without losing the conversation.
The Cactus Is Doing Great
A cactus outside my house became an unexpected review about the climate, tacos, caterpillars, and how "French food" is a moving target.
Never, Darling
Getting Known
Bread. Soap. Cookies.
A homemade tube of lip balm, a Finnish immigrant, 460 million tons of plastic, and a few questions about what we’ve forgotten how to do.
Assuming France Agrees
There’s a difference between living somewhere and making yourself legible to the place you live.
You Don't Need to Know the Words
Italian versions of Neil Diamond songs are why I write about music at all
life abroad
Quieter, But Not Stopped
Writing a book, revisiting old pieces, and staying in the thread
Table & Foraging
Eat Like You Live in France
Where & how we buy things, how we build meals, and why the small adjustments matter more than recipes
culture
A Year of Living in France - 3 stories, 6 months apart
Three pieces from the last year on relocating, staying, and the part nobody really prepares you for.
Leaving the US
The Aggregator: the Best of March
What got read. What lingered. What I liked.
Soundtrack
The Time Warp, With Instructions—in French
Fifty years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the difference between chaos you fall into and chaos you’re taught how to perform
Leaving the US
You Don’t Start Over, You Continue
You don’t start over. You bring everything with you.
Soundtrack
They Don’t Live, They Just Wait
Asturias, after coal, and the sound of exhaustion
culture
Some Cities Have Markets Every Weekend. Most of France Doesn’t.
How we built a home, what to know, and where to start
Soundtrack
Before Punk Had a Name, the Band Was Already There
From Lima to São Paulo, South American rock forces a rethink of who gets to define music history
american living in france
We Live Here Now (An Update)
Routines, reinvention, and the strange comfort of becoming a data point
culture
Quinqui: The Word That Traveled from Hardware to Street Crime
Flea markets, quinquis, and how language carries a country’s history with it
Soundtrack
The Songs That Never Went Away & Never Should Have Been Made
Marujita Díaz, old songs, and what gets carried forward without question