This week I spent time translating a document for a friend whose grandfather fought in World War I. The document, issued by the French government, recognizes members of a United States Marine Regiment that helped defeat the Germans near the end of the war. There’s only one paragraph to translate.…
This week I listened to an interview with Meg Smaker, a gutsy yet empathetic filmmaker whose documentary, Jihad Rehab, was initially hailed by numerous film festivals and critics, then condemned and dropped like a hot potato. The claim that the film was Islamaphobic is behind its sudden death sentence. After…
Since it’s “Nonfiction November” I thought I’d spend some time reviewing my favorite nonfiction reads from this year. I’d say that on the whole, 2022 has been a better-than-usual year for nonfiction—basing that statement on nothing other than my personal experience. I feel like this year I broke through a…
There are many reasons why I keep returning to the city of Paris, some of them concrete, others intangible. I always take hundreds of photos. Last summer, on my first trip back since the pandemic, I did so with the idea of melding them into a video to share with…
My last post featured the bitter story of Marthe Gautier, a young female doctor betrayed by her male colleagues. In 1957, Gautier was a promising intern in the field of pediatric cardiology. While working in a research lab studying children with intellectual disabilities, Gautier’s ingenuity and dedication led to the…
In the 1950s, a young doctor named Marthe Gautier happened to be the only scientist in Paris who knew how to grow human cell cultures. Gautier had perfected the new, cutting-edge technique after receiving a highly-coveted scholarship that sent her to study at Harvard University for a year. Upon returning…
After a week of perfect weather, another glorious morning fueled our footsteps as we made our way beneath the Porte de Bourgogne to catch a northbound tram. It was our last day in Bordeaux, a city of 250,000 residents with an enviable transportation network comprised of 4 tram lines, 80…
At the end of June, my husband Andy and I visited the French city of Bordeaux for the first time. I often plan a full agenda when we travel but this year we left much of our daily itinerary to chance and whimsy. A week before we boarded a train…
