Simone Says

  France’s role in American life predates the birth of the United States. Our founding Fathers were greatly influenced by French Philosophers of the Enlightenment- Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. Thomas Jefferson loved everything French; Benjamin Franklin loved quite a few French women and spent many years in France. These founding Americans absorbed the concepts of “Liberty, […]

  I first wrote about Ukraine in 2014 during the Maidan Revolution, a response to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the establishment of two pro-separatist regions in Eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk. Since then the pot of revolt has been boiling furiously while still being, somehow, contained. Now Ukraine has elected a new president, […]

From my window I see a very tall tree with contorted branches. It looks the same throughout the year so there is really nothing to “observe” about it except for the visiting crows and sparrows who perch on it on their way somewhere else. I have found out that it is a twisted oak tree. […]

The task of making a huge, alien land a friendly and cozy one was never easy. Colonialism mistakenly assumes that a conquered territory has no civilization of its own and has to have one imposed on it. In this scenario, the governing and the governed actors each play their assigned roles in a well-oiled machine. […]

Have parents really been listening to the nursery rhymes they read to their children at bedtime? Do they truly want them to hear that after Jack and Jill climbed up the famous hill, that Jack sustained a head injury while Jill was left careening down the hill behind him? How about the maid in the […]

  When I lived in Beirut in the 1930’s, I used to feed a stray cat who hung around outside our house. I would lower a container of leftovers to him from a kitchen window. People’s relationship with cats goes back to antiquity. Cat images are found on walls of ancient caves as well as […]

While we are still feeling the sadness of the Notre Dame fire, let me mention a few things about Cathedrals in general. A definitional element of every Cathedral is that it is the site of the Bishop’s residence from which he spreads the word of God as revealed by the Pope from his throne. Thus […]

    I saw Notre Dame Cathedral for the first time in December 1946. I had just arrived in France from Tel Aviv and cathedrals were not part of my life experience. I did not know a gargoyle from a chimera. As I stood on the vast esplanade in the piercing cold and looked at Notre Dame, […]

Algerian President  Abdelaziz Bouteflika recently announced that he would be running for a fifth term. He did not make the announcement personally. In fact, he has not spoken a word in public for the last five years. He spends most of his time in Switzerland, being treated for an unknown illness. His only public appearances […]

Advice columns in newspapers have always been popular. Some readers skip the news and go to the advice columns to see what problems are bothering other people. It’s amusing to postpone looking at the answer imagining how you might respond before you look at what Dear Abby or Ann Landers has to say. The British […]