2022-01-12 Tunisia’s spicy Harissa gets UNESCO heritage status
December 1, 2022
You can read this story in French or English While in Tunisia, I learned to cook couscous Southern Tunisian style, in other words,the best kind of
Today is Thanksgiving 2022, aka Turkey Day.
November 24, 2022
One tradition that I always observe is to use canned cranberry sauce on my turkey dinner. Cranberry sauce reminds me of my childhood because that’s
Proposed Driving Itinerary of the Cathar Region
November 9, 2022
This driving itinerary strikes me as a good place to continue our discussions. It is strongly based on this web page. This map shows most of the
How you know when your volleyball-playing days are over
October 7, 2022
Saeed Jones
September 21, 2022
Driving home from Durham last Tuesday, I turned on my radio and heard the end of a riveting poem that seemed to describe many of my feelings about
Why history moves in cycles
August 27, 2022
Hard times make strong people, strong people make good times, and good times make weak people - Xabier Ormaetxea, a dark-haired
Shopping lists
August 11, 2022
Our daughter knows how hard I’ve searched for a good checklist for tasks like shopping, etc. Today she sent me this image, found on Twitter: I
Frédéric Bruly Bouabré « L’alphabet de l’ouest africain »
May 6, 2022
MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, has an exhibit of the work of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Côte d’Ivoire, 1923–2014. Born in 1923 in Zéprégühé in
American Anti-Government sentiment
April 3, 2022
Rather than writing much here, I want to refer you to this perceptive article by Ezra Klein. Klein’s two concluding paragraphs should be enough to
Proof that the Earth’s Climate is Not Changing
April 2, 2022
As everyone knows, we Republicans don’t believe facts. So I was very happy when I found this beautiful visualization of monthly global temperature
Our Poor Kitchen
April 2, 2022
We saw the water running out and immediately started mopping up the water with all our house’s towels: Washing machines drain their water
The NY Times has a Telegram channel
March 16, 2022
If you’re woke like me, you’ve probably read a lot about the Telegram messaging app. I downloaded it some time ago and then forgot about it until
Amazon loses my smile
March 16, 2022
When Amazon first introduced its Smile feature, I would start each shopping session by changing the URL from www.amazon.com to smile.amazon.com and
History versus the UNC Press fire of 1990
March 16, 2022
If future historians are well designed and supplied with sufficient training data, including facial recognition data, they might catch the error in
J’ai pensé à ce passage du livre « La septième fonction du langage » de Laurent Binet
February 18, 2022
Pour aucune raison particulière, je me suis souvenu hier d’un scene qui ma fait rigoler: À l’université de Vincennes, pour accéder aux salles de
Sufism in Tunisia
February 13, 2022
I’ve found Christian Science Monitor stories to be paywalled at times, but I was able to read the entirety of these two stories. In Tunis, artisans
Remembering Mark Grandy
February 2, 2022
Mark Grandy I grew up on Walnut Street in Berkeley, about a block and a half up a hill from the flatlands where Live Oak Park was located.
2022-02-01 OLLI Bottleneck
February 1, 2022
Dear Howard, I’ve been thinking about how difficult it is, certainly for me, to obtain and organize resources for my OLLI courses. For people like
Comparing Gafsa and Chapel Hill
January 23, 2022
Gafsa is only about 100 miles south of Chapel Hill! Chapel Hill, NC: 35.9132,-79.055844 Gafsa, Tunisia: 34.43114,8.775656 The north-south distance
Se oriente, rapaz
January 12, 2022
En lisant À la recherche du temps perdu de Marcel Proust, on croise un passage où le narrateur décrit le clocher de l’église de Saint-Hilaire dans
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