What the Capitol Says: American Neoclassicism
...established through the timeless principles of liberty and order...
Paris Notre-Dame: What the Fire Revealed
I have stood inside Notre-Dame three times, and each time it has been a different building. The first time I stood inside the cathedral was…
Why I Travel
The places most people only read about turn out to be exactly what they promised — and also something else entirely. Notre-Dame in Paris, the…
São Miguel: Fog, Fire, and Tea
São Miguel arrived after Pico, which meant arriving after something — after the volcanic desolation of Faial's ash fields, after Jeff's quiet reckoning with his…
Pico: Standing on Ancestral Soil
Pico was the reason we went to the Azores. Our friend Jeff had grown up with stories of the volcanic island his great-grandfather had left…
Faial: From Green to Ash at the Edge of the Atlantic
I had imagined the Azores as something like Hawaii — tropical, volcanic, Portuguese. I was wrong about the first part. We had come from Lisbon,…
Continue reading → Faial: From Green to Ash at the Edge of the Atlantic
The Netherlands: Water, Tolerance, and the City That Shouldn’t Exist
On our first evening on the houseboat, we settled onto the small deck nestled into the side of the Dutch barge with a drink as…
Continue reading → The Netherlands: Water, Tolerance, and the City That Shouldn’t Exist
Brussels: The Second Reading
Brussels was cleaner than we remembered — the soot that had darkened Sainte-Catherine on our first visit was gone, the church bright now where it had been dull. A single night in the capital, this time without day trips or rail connections outward. The city concentrated itself accordingly.
Buenos Aires: La Vida Es Buena
Buenos Aires doesn't ease you in. It absorbs you, neighborhood by neighborhood, until one morning you realize you've stopped looking at a map. We arrived…
The Asado: What the Fire Requires
In Argentina, an asado is not a barbecue. It is a social event that happens to involve fire. The name comes from the Spanish verb asar —…