Author: Emily
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On Ferguson and Silence
The alleys of Philadelphia are nasty, and when I say nasty I don’t mean a few pieces of greasy hamburger wrapper. Hypodermic needles between wire fences, a lot of used condoms, a curious amount of mussel shells, and also hamburger wrappers, all collected by me and a bunch of other idealistic young people in trendy…
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Camille Lepage and the Struggle for Objectivity
As most tragedies do, the news of Camille Lepage’s death throbbed on my newsfeed for the briefest of moments. There were a few links to the NYT obituary; a sad face, because emotions can be reduced now to punctuation parts, welcome to the 21st century; and a link to what is now probably her most…
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Homecoming
I wish that I could write like any of Paris’s many-varied and mystical wordsmiths, to tell you how exquisite and intense and sharp it is to leave, but as I am not so nimble I’ll just say that leaving Paris is like peeling off a tongue that’s stuck to a popsicle — just as the…
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Dancing Through Paris
I don’t know that I’ve ever danced so much in my life, or spent a more exhaustingly wonderful weekend. The past weekend were two of the biggest events of the Paris nonprofit schedule—Solidays, a three day festival for HIV/AIDS prevention, and le Marche de Fierté, the Paris Pride parade. Both these things were hugely impressive.…
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25 Things I Found at the Marche des Puces
I’ve been incredibly slow on updating this. Since my last post, I went to meet my long-lost German family in Oldenburg, went to Berlin, had an amazing time at both places, and spent over 24 hours on a bus due to highways being inexplicably closed and also a soccer game that meant that beer bikes…
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Introductions
Let me introduce you to some of the people in my life right now. This man is named Hector. The “man” is really a boy, he’s 17 although you would never know it because his hands are twice my size and he speaks more slowly than most teenagers I know. He wears a red shirt…
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Mimi
Almost May, good lord. France has just exploded into bloom, the trees are exhaling flowers all over the grass that was finally brave enough to sortie. I have been spending far too many afternoons lying in the sun in the Parc Monceau, people-watching from behind the sunglasses I found on the Métro and trying to…
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Mmm, Italia
It has been a while since my last post – in part because I’ve been jaunting around Paris and around Europe, and in part because I’ve been lazy. So here it is, my list of updates. Easter was spent in a bright, frescoed, and Jesuit church with a drenching beam of sunlight that illuminated the…
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A Crazy Story and Also Serious Thoughts
There are a lot of things I’m not sure of when it comes to religion, but here is one of them: really, what do you do with the extra holy water? It’s that thing when you dip your fingertip in to cross yourself and suddenly it’s dripping because you had one of those little nervy…
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Ideš mi na kurac (Mom, Don’t Translate That)
Seriously, Mom, don’t translate that. My program gives us a week of vacation inbetween classes and beginning our internships, and, being contrary, I decided to go to Croatia. Why, you ask? (You and everyone else that I met there.) I’ve never been to Eastern Europe before, for one, and why not? Apart from the flight,…
Emily Wolfteich 