Lila Prime

 I take attendance by having students answer a question. What is your dream vacation for spring break? Actual places that are reachable with...

A dangerous beverage, I'd guess. This post's theme word is yardang (n), "an elongated ridge formed by wind erosion, ofte...

The  Musée de Cluny  (alternately, the Musée national du Moyen Âge;  wiki ) is a lovely museum in the center of Paris, focusing on the middl...

 I spotted this doppelgänger while wandering a seemingly-endless, identical airport corridor. Maybe it's an alternate-timeline version? ...

Things I miss about Europe (month 1, withdrawal edition). Accents, and the mental work of untangling them. Beautiful and old architecture...

Paris is notoriously dense. Building footprints and space in the (x,y) plane are coveted and extremely valuable. (Bear with me.) So it is cu...

The exterior of the National Museum of the American Indian is a very appealing textured series of waves, spun to be vertical walls.  T...

During intermission, the top exterior-facing balcony of the Opéra Bastille building provides wonderful views across Paris, thro...

Daylight savings time is some kind of entrenched, slow-motion mass hysteria. Why do we all agree to lose and gain an hour? And, if we do al...

The ways in which the inhuman and transitory artificial environments of airports are decorated always suggest strange alien decision-making ...

No matter where we walked in [the touristy part of] San Antonio, an orange squiggle followed us, always just catching the corner of the eye...

The fact of living on a sphere, and gradually rotating to face a flaming ball of plasma and gas, is occasionally lovely and dramatic. Ju...

Another couple months, another set of life experiences and retrospective thoughts about them, posted to the internet for all of noisy poster...

The Victoria and Albert Museum is a beautiful, well-lit, thoughtfully arranged collection of art and art-like objects. It breaks with the ...

Just in case you had any doubt, a huge tract of land in valuable downtown London is devoted solely to a giant plinth and statue of Albert. ...

The venue was gothic, lit for high drama or an alien invasion. It was a Welcome to Nightvale  show, so the combination event was a quite re...

Reputable authorities assure me that yonder, past the clouds and across the lake, France awaits. It's a lovely view. This post...

Public campaigns are often dour, lots of carrot and not much stick. But this one to reduce garbage is magnificent: each public garbage can ...

On the lakefront of Lausanne, there is a park. In this park, there is a pagoda. The pagoda is elaborate, gold-leafed, ornately paint...

Further adventures in my quest towards fluency. (I have long since come to terms with the fact that I will never be as hyperbolically fluent...