In the recent reports of the Louvre break-in, many accounts mentioned the Louvre’s heretofore most famous heist. In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, now one of the Louvre’s most prized possessions, was stolen. In an earlier post, I wrote about several aspects of this famous robbery: the Mona Lisa’s…
Last week, we bid farewell to our sweet kit-kat of 16 years. As fortune would have it, the weather was cooler and the days free from rain. So, Cleo and I spent our final days together outside—she dozing beneath the leaves of a crowded hosta bed, occasionally raising an eyelid…
Last Sunday started famously with a small family gathering under the Michigan sun while temperatures remained in the 60s. Sometime in the afternoon, however, my blog went offline, and it took nearly 20 hours to correct the problem. That was annoying, but it was the least of the troubles that…
We’ve all read about notorious criminals who, after pulling off a clever heist, were caught, served time, then applied their talents to a legitimate trade. Consider Kevin Mitnick, the brilliant computer hacker who was imprisoned for multiple cybercrimes, then launched a globally successful cybersecurity company upon his release. Or the…
This week, I’m breaking out the champagne and adding a shot of St~Germain! My blog, cas d’intérêt, just landed at #32 on Feedspot’s list of 100 Best French Blogs and Websites in 2025. There are some great sites in the Top 100, and I’m honored to be included. If you’re…
Until reading Barbara Kingsolver’s fictional novel La Lacuna, I would never have envisioned Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, French surrealist author André Breton, and Mexican muralist and painter Diego Rivera as part of the same squad. Their commitment to Marxism drew these three extraordinary men together and, for a brief period,…
Without question, the hardest period of my life came after giving birth to twins. My son was two when his sisters were born, and the physical demands of caring for three humans under the age of three were unending. I was on a perpetual hamster wheel, averaging 28 diapers per…
One of the contenders for this year’s Oscar for Best International Film is The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Secretly filmed in Tehran, the fictional screenplay takes place during the weeks of protest that followed the nonfictional death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who died in police custody…
