Every once in awhile, the name of a novel you last read five years ago, or a painting you last saw two years ago, or a song your mom used to play growing up, ha...
My mother, Patty Goffinet, has always been a field biologist. In her highly unsupervised childhood in the wild west town of Fort Pierce, Florida, she spent a lo...
Fall came to Novosibirsk the last day of August. The week before had included a minus 1 evening, but that was a summer aberration. The last day of August was th...
Have you ever peered through a crowd of potential mates and wondered which would go camping with you?
Which would tolerate cold, heat, mosquitoes, and bagels f...
But feminism at large, lately, has been vexed by Fifty Shades of Grey and the rabbit-hole of questions that it poses. How could a notably feminist director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, volunteer to direct the movie? Why do so many women like the book?
Great things have been created because of/ in spite of confining situations. Think of Pride and Prejudice and the oddities shoved into local history museums: flowers woven out of a dead great aunt’s hair, to-scale cork models of historic buildings, decoupage ashtrays. Still, from the point of view of Russian language, Jane Austen basically sat at home.
It all started with a very greasy piece of chicken I ate at lunch in the home for otherwise homeless mothers where I work. If I had been smarter, I wouldn't hav...
A few weeks ago I got sick to my stomach. It started with a baguette at lunch, one side spread with tiny meat chunks, the gaps in meat chunks filled in with gre...
So, what does Novosibirsk, Russia, look like?
Novosibirsk is not a pretty city. In fact, it's ugly. Picture factories and Soviet apartment complexes, both po...
Franny Goffinet was an English major at Davidson College (class of 2013), and a swimming instructor at Indian Harbor Beach pool. She now lives in Novosibirsk, Russia. She thanks the Lilly Foundation and Youthreach (two Christian organizations) for bringing her to Caritas, West Siberia.
