Olivier Peyrous

Contextualizing France's Yellow Vests Protests

Contextualizing France's Yellow Vests Protests

COLLABORATION BY KAMI L. RICE, OLIVIER PEYROUS, AND JC JOHNSON

 Since part of our Culture Keeper team is based in France, it seems appropriate to bring you a Culture Keeper take on one of France’s biggest news stories in the waning weeks of 2018: the Gilets Jaunes (“Yellow Vests” or “Yellow Jackets”) movement that made it into foreign news outlets when the protests turned violent in Paris. We’re not a breaking news outlet by any stretch of the imagination, but we are in the business of offering a bit of cultural context where we can. Which is what we seek to do here as we experiment with a new-to-us storytelling format that we hope to perfect over time.

A Moons and Houses and Hope Travelogue

A Moons and Houses and Hope Travelogue

By Kami L. Rice

We entered Bosnia by road as night fell. A full moon rose and threw a spotlight down on houses scattered like carcasses through the countryside.

So very many carcasses.

Empty inside, roofless, with charred stone walls marking a former existence.

Silent, somber, haunting, poetic testimony to tragedy.

What exactly had happened here?

Suddenly it all mattered.