On Monday, HISPinParis 2025 will officially set off. Over their month in Paris students will be expected to blog at least twice a week. The blog aggregator can be found here:
I thought about writing instructions and then thought I could teach by doing instead. So here’s a blog post that demonstrates what I’m looking for:
————————
Last week I had a work meeting that took me to DC. It was a great excuse to walk around and of course enjoy some nice restaurants. My husband and kids joined me for a bit, which was even better. A highlight was visiting my favorite DC museum (yes, even over the various Smithsonians): the National Building Museum. I won’t talk about it here because it honestly deserves its own starring role.
But I also took the opportunity to enjoy the Logan Circle area. That neighborhood got multiple mentions in this month’s episode of the Verdigris Podcast. It’s a prominent and longstanding gayborhood. Hanging out there during Pride Month felt apt. We even got a rainbow during the visit!
Even with the heat and humidity, I made my family take a little stroll. We of course started talking about architecture, because I can’t help myself. More importantly, we found a bagel place: Call Your Mother. We did indeed call my mother while we had a good nosh.
Then on the walk back to the hotel we saw two great examples of adaptive reuse. One I was already familiar with and one new one:
- Le Diplomate Restaurant, which had a long history as a laundromat before being abandoned. Its rehab has won well-deserved preservation awards.
- Aslin Beer Garden and Coffee Bar. It was too early for a beer and I was already plenty caffeinated but this place looks like a great example of adaptive reuse too. It was clearly originally a gas station.
This little excursion through Logan Circle was not the main point of the trip by any means, but it really highlighted that it remains a historic yet vibrant and dynamic gayborhood. Paris also has a wonderful gayborhood, and I’ll look forward to seeing how they compare. It’s even likely to be just as hot when I go. But I’ll call it right now: pretty sure it’ll be easier to find a baguette than a bagel.
————————
OK, so what you read above shows the kind of thing I’d like to see. In general:
DO:
- Use one or more themes to create a narrative in the blog post
- Include links, images, video, audio, etc.
- Make it personal, and discuss items that interest YOU. It doesn’t have to be architecture/planning/preservation related. Wanna talk about food? Fashion? Animals? Plants? Music? Go for it!
- Be creative. If you are artistic at all – drawing, photography, etc. – please consider integrating that into your blog.
DON’T:
- Just write a list of what you did.
- Write wikipedia-like entries. You need to interpret and distill what’s important. Again, make it personal, not just a neutral description.
- Write blog posts that are just text without any other media.
————————
As I write this post, there are over 550 posts in the aggregator (!!) Take a look at some of them and see what resonates with you. And then, start writing yourself! Bon voyage. ✈️🇫🇷