And Why Not?

Carthage is one of those places I recall from High School history class, back when the subject seemed like an endless series of dates and battles and rote events, none of which resembled any lived experience. Carthage sits on the Mediterranean east of present-day...

The Bardo Museum has one of the best collections of ancient Punic and Roman remains from what was the city of Carthage. Tunisia has been warred over and settled by virtually every imaginable tribal group you can name, and the pieces contained in the museum showed a...

Sousse is one of the larger towns in Tunisia and by far one of the most popular, both with Tunisians and Europeans, the latter of whom, riding the strength of the Pound, the Euro and recent Russian oil wealth, swarm the beaches throughout the summers. Tourism is...

Enfida is the mid-sized town that has been my home-base for most of my Tunisian explorations. I arrived here with a lovely traveling companion whose father is from these parts, and whose remaining family appear to be as plentiful as the sand that blows everywhere....

Here are some photos taken at one of the most famous resting places in the world. Located in the 20th Arrondissement in Paris, the cemetery is home—such as it is—to some of France's finest: Marcel Proust, Frederic Chopin, Honore de Balzac, Heloise and Abelard,...

Regardless of whether or not you've ever been to Paris, you're familiar with Montmartre. In the early part of the 20th Century it was home to a couple artists whose names might ring a bell: Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Theophile...

There are certain moments in every struggling foreigner's translation experiences that really stand out. Because I think laughing at myself is essential part of any experience (and also lays the requisite groundwork for subsequently laughing at others), here's today's...

Today was my first full day in Paris. Thanks to some pretty serious jet-lag, my internal ticker's been wonky since I left Seattle last week, and I fell asleep quite early last night, around 11PM local time. I was awake by 2AM, and spent the hours between then and 8AM...

The following are links to sites maintained by some fine folks I know who are engaged in activities more interesting than the banal and more involved than Facebook.  Most of them are decent people (there are a couple obvious exceptions, but let's not get hung-up...