It’s this weird thing that my thoroughly continental childhood had a slight Asian flavor to it, although it’s not something I generally discuss. This influence is due to the fact that my grandparents lived in Manila and Macau during part of my childhood and sent me all sorts of fun things from that part of the world. This was at a time when Asia was still very far away from North America or Europe. Here is a typical childhood photo of me in Paris extolling my like for Hong Ko

I had an auditory flashback whereby I realized why Bowie’s 1971 Life on Mars always felt familiar to me yet not quite right. Because I thought it was my favorite song when I was a kid, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was this French song from 1978 by Hervé Vilard. I think if you listen you can understand my confusion. Not the same, and yet… Nous c’est une illusion qui meurt, D’un éclat de rire en plein coeur Une histoire de rien du tout Comme il en existe beaucoup … For compari

It’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. You’ll recall I had a grandmother who escaped a concentration camp. In my historical digging I’ve learned of other tantalizing bits of family lore but it seems as though stories are getting mixed together and I am having trouble separating fact from fiction. I learned from my great aunt a while ago that my great-great grandfather’s brother was an owner of Chateau St. Julien. That seems unlikely, as it’s always been owned by famous wine families

I had a fair number of technical difficulties with this entry as the reel-to-reel from 1959 was damaged. You’ll hear some interference despite my best efforts to clean up the audio. In any case, this is an 8-minute interview my grandmother did on talk radio in Chicago in 1959, a mere 17 months after arriving in the United States. It’s delightful to hear her broken English and thick French accent. She’s talking here of her process as a portrait artist as she launched the caree

Palavas-les-Flots is a French seaside resort south of Montpelier. My mother, along with her mother and new stepfather, spent a summer vacation in Palavas while my step-grandfather  enjoyed learning how to use new film equipment. I find this movie of my mother getting ready and then enjoying breakfast with her mother the most wonderful of the home movies. Sharing a meal with family brings back memories. My mother marvels at how scrawny they all look; their post-war bodies not

Virtually everyone I know, in a virtual manner, has renamed themselves Charlie this week. #jesuischarlie The gruesome murder of staffers at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris has created a solidarity among writers and comics and fans of freedom. Unfortunately, it does mean that we’re also defending the freedom of a publication that frequently behaved like assholes. Comedy–particularly the crude machete that is satire–can punch down. On a normal day I don’t give a crap about th

No one is more American than an immigrant. I think of my family when the US  immigration reform discussion crops up again because we are all of us born in France and new to America. Yes, it is a peculiar feature of my life that despite having the most French of families my own mother and her parents lived outside of Chicago starting in 1953. In fact, they lived the American Dream. Their house in the suburbs. I think only a family as art directed by a French woman could captur