Euh, quoi?

It’s the last week of HISPinParis23. My students have been blogging about their activities – check the posts out here – but I’ve been too busy to write anything. The students have ably commented on all our activities, so there’s no need for me to add my two cents. I did get to check out […]

Conseils de voyage

A friend of my sister’s is traveling to Paris and wanted some pointers. Plus, HISPinParis is heading out in two weeks anyway. This seems like a good time to write up some Paris-specific travel advice. So in no particular order, here goes: In terms of food: One last piece of advice: try to speak French. […]

Don’t like ADU’s? Don’t have one.

**DISCLAIMER: I am writing this post as a private homeowner in Fredericksburg. The post does not purport to reflect the opinions of my employer or my colleagues.** **NOTE ADDED JUNE 16: Although this post disagrees with the political position being put forward by the SOSFH lawn signs, I fully respect property owners’ rights to engage […]

Something New!

Teaching #HISPinParis is really engaging as a teacher in large part because I get to introduce students to new places, some of which they probably wouldn’t see otherwise. That said, it’s pretty rare that I get to see something completely new to *me*. I lived in Paris for the first 15 years of my life […]

Friendly disagreement

I am in Paris for #HISPinParis22. It’s my first time back since 2019, the longest I’ve been away from my native city. As usual, one assignment for the class is that students have to blog about their experience. Personally, I haven’t blogged since < checks website for first time in months > April 2021. Yikes. […]

The new normal

I spent over a decade pouring my heart and soul in this site. I perfected the pages for my classes, constantly updated to new plugins, read up on WordPress changes, and generally spent lots and lots of time making the site as useable and pretty as possible. And then COVID.UMW required that all courses be […]

back to the drawing board

I’ve now spent over a decade railing against the use of LMS. I’ve put my money where my mouth is, too, developing my materials on this site, keeping them available without a paywall, and making interfaces as easy as possible. My ethical objections to the LMS hasn’t changed, and I still hate the way it […]

“FUN” STUFF FOR QUARANTIME

Planning/architecture/preservation related movies: Hello, everyone. If you’re reading this it’s because you’re desperately bored. Well, let me help to the best of my abilities. Here are ideas/links/arts/whatevers that I’ve collected or been sent from around the internets. I’ll keep adding stuff as I go. Enjoy & stay safe! Videos I made with my kids (I […]

A few thoughts on a few museums

I used to be a museum professional. It’s funny, because I’m not the “museum person” in my department and since it’s not my field of research, most students have no idea I used to work in museums for a living. While I’m retired from being a museum professional, I’m still very much a museum aficionado. […]

Art de la rue

The #HISPinParis19 students took lots of neat pics while we were in Paris, and after a month and a half back in the US, I’ve finally found a few minutes to look through my own. Among the 10,000 shots of my kids – yes, I’m that mom – I did manage to take a few […]