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…
Journaling… like every other human endeavor, there exists a narrow sliver of people who raise this seemingly simple practice to the level of a refined and illuminating art. Such is the case with graphic novelist Craig Thompson’s Carnet de Voyage. In the spring of 2004, Thompson traveled to Europe to…
Many of us are familiar with the delightful illustrations of Jean-Jacques Sempé, who inadvertently described himself by saying « Il m’est arrivé de devenir, par moments, raisonnable, mais jamais adulte », “It occurred to me, every now and then, to be sensible, but never adult.” Sempé became widely known in France after…
If you’ve ever taken a course in French literature, you probably had to read at least one work by a Francophone author with African origins. France’s colonial empire once controlled a significant portion of Africa, and while nearly all of these areas gained independence by 1960, French is widely spoken…
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…
I was first introduced to the engravings of Jacques Callot many years ago when I happened upon a free exhibit of his 18-plate series, The Miseries of War. Born in Lorraine in 1593, Callot is one of France’s great masters of engraving. Not only did he produce thousands of spectacular…
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…
One of my favorite exhibit spaces, Le musée d’art moderne de Paris, currently features over 100 works by Henri Matisse devoted to his daughter, Marguerite. The exhibit runs through August 24, 2025, so you might want to stop by if you plan to visit Paris this summer. I have to…
