Other Interests

Gardening with native Texas Plants

I enjoy gardening as a complement to my intellectual work.  The physical engagement with plants and soil and visual design forms a satisfying contrast to my usual engagement with words on a screen. I like how gardening is an emergent, creative collaboration between me and the plants, with unpredictable results.  As Bourdieu might say, gardening is a modus operandi rather than an opus operatum – it is an endless process without a final product.

I mainly use native plants in my garden.  I am a member of the Native Plant Society of Texas.

“A garden is not the wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, its appearance, to human design and effort… It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows.”
— W.S. Merwin, What is a Garden, 2016, 56

TRAVEL

I enjoy seeing different parts of the world.  Sometimes I am inspired to document my travels.  Here are two travel narratives:


GOETHE CENTER

As someone with roots in both Germany and the U.S., I am active in German cultural activities.  I am co-organizer of the Dallas Goethe Center’s Stammtisch Nord.

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