I am reading Snow by Orhan Pamuk. I was introduced to it in my class with Mindy when she handed out his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which was excerpted in The New Yorker.  I was haunted by the piece as he spoke of his recently deceased father and his memories reminded me of my own–images, [...]

The New York Times has provided me with much to go on for my Diaspora ponderings with this interactive map they have published, highlighting how foreign-born groups have settled in the U.S. from 1880 until 2000.  You can see all the different groups as a whole, or select a country of origin, view impacts of [...]

As I’ve shared in previous posts, I am fascinated about how people get where they are in the world.  Sometimes it is just a calling. This morning, I paid a visit to Girl in Rome’s blog and read her post about this week being her one year anniversary to giving up her life and career [...]

I ought to know more languages than I do.  My father spoke several–including German and French–fluently but not to me.  My mother spoke  Tagalog but I never got the chance to learn it.  My grandfather was a renowned scholar of Slavic languages.  So the idea of other language is with me as a missed opportunity. [...]

Whenever I hear about somebody settling down somewhere outside a big city, I am fascinated by what brought them there. Certainly, the answer is often economic, but even so, I want to know the details.  What sort of job or industry or circumstance lead the Laotians to settle in Richmond, CA? T. was telling me [...]