The Mineralogy Gallery at the National Museum of Natural History here has been closed for a millllllion years. But now, it is open, and that is amazing. I love the National Museum of Natural History above all and any others here. The Louvre? The Musee d’Orsay? Pass and pass. Whatevs!....

I’ve been home for the last 10 days, on a trip that’s been sort of equal parts fantastic and terrible—the kind where your mom says things like, “I know this trip has been terrible” and then you both start talking about the new puppy. But let’s talk about the fantastic....

I was eating a burrito and wondering if anyone else had noticed that the Best Picture nominees were the stories of, like, a half-dozen white guys and Martin Luther King (at least we know where the bar is set for the non-white guy portion of the population) when I came....

The question I am asked most often: “But aren’t Parisians so rude?” There is no good way to answer this question. My personal belief is that all people are kind in roughly the same way. Once I went for a walk between two small French villages, and one of the....

The same day I realized that half the reason I like traveling is because it’s the easiest way to get rid of clutter (this book is changing my life) I realized the other half of the reason I like living in France: It’s easier to be a lady here. I....

Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness. Despite the beauty of Justice Kennedy’s prose — and it is beautiful, most of it; it reminds me, in its way, of the closing passage of Thornton Wilder’s “Bridge of San Luis Rey,” and we’ll get back to that....

I wrote this, a consideration of life as an expat in France, before yesterday’s insanity: It’s still worth it, living in a strange, unfamiliar place. What living abroad part-time teaches you—besides how to say “I don’t understand” and “Where is the bathroom” in the language of every country you visit—is....

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