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Welcome — glad you’re here.

Finding Home Elsewhere is where I write about food, music, culture, and the oddities of life abroad. My wife and I left the U.S. a few years ago and have been piecing together a new life in France ever since.

This is all about how you get to know a place. One piece at a time.

It’s not about politics or tourist checklists (though they sneak in sometimes). It’s about memory, taste, music, and the everyday strangeness of learning to live somewhere new.

Here are a few posts to get you started:

🍴 Table & Garden (Food)

• The Salt Marsh Sheep of Mont St Michel
• Foraging the Invasive Edges in France
• One Day, It Is Not Going to Be Like This — on food systems, fragility, and nettles.

🎵 Soundtrack (Music)

• Le Scopitone Francaise - the beautiful 1960s atomic video jukebox
• French Radio Frequencies

Everyday Elsewhere (Culture)

• What Comes After Leaving — the quieter work of identity and adaptating.
• We’re Not From Here Either - Julio Cortizar’s Grafitti

🌀 Curiosities (Oddities)

• Cagots
• Manners in NYC vs. France
• modern Light in Quiet Chapels of France

Posting Schedule

• I write, both long form and shorter, I’ll send out videos occasionally, do interviews and host discussions. Whatever gets the job done.
• I publish twice a week:
• Midweek (Wednesday or Thursday): Culture, everyday life abroad, or curiosities.
• Weekend (Sunday): Food and recipes, with a side of history.
• Music and other oddities pop up when they need to — sometimes as their own post, sometimes folded into the weekly mix.
• The idea isn’t to flood your inbox. It’s to share stories and observations at a pace that gives you time to read, think, and maybe even cook something new.

If any of this resonates, subscribe and join the conversation. At the end of most posts, I’ll ask a question — I’d love to hear your answers.

musical acompaniment

Nougayork Claude Nougaro (1987)

Claude Nougaro, the jazz poet from Toulouse who had a few hits in the 60s and 70s, then hit a slump in the 80s and fled to New York, where he reinvented himself with Nougayork (1987). Somehow this oddball mix of slap bass, neon synths, and lyrics lurching from Ronsard to odd ham jokes went platinum in France. He’s got a great voice, a catalog worth exploring — and this track remains one of those mysteries of France. Go figure.