Pedro Lilienfeld

In my autobiography I mentioned, very briefly, Lucette Descaves as being the second wife of Louis Fourestier, who married her shortly after my grandmother Dola passed on at age 92. He was then 75 and Lucette, 61. She was quite a remarkable person and merits far more than a mere mention in my memoirs. She…

In my joint autobiography, Pétain’s Praise and Other Incongruities, I frequently mentioned and cited Louis Fourestier, the second husband of my paternal grandmother, Julia, alias Dola. I first met Fourestier in 1936 on my arrival in Paris as a two-year old child and then, repeatedly, over the years, as an adult. He was, obviously, the…

One of my great loves, starting in my teenage years, has been music, principally what is considered classical music. That love was, most probably, stimulated by early exposure, first in Paris mostly subconsciously, and then by more direct influence from my father, in Quito. I remember the first piece that I loved to hear, over…

The written word has provided me deep satisfaction since about the age of nine. In my autobiography I have mentioned some of the salient authors who I read as a teenager and which stand out in my memory, as well as others I did not cite: Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Karl May, Emile Zola, Curzio…

In my autobiography I glossed over the subject of my experience with languages, their acquisition and development, and related insights. I want to emphasize that the linguistic processes that I underwent as a child may have the appearance of having been chaotic. Perhaps, psychologically, the manner in which I was exposed to languages and learned…

Incongruities Galore The vast majority takes for granted that we all are citizens of a specific country — usually but not exclusively the one where we were born. This reality also implies that we have the right to possess a passport that attests to that citizenship and with which we can travel to other countries.…

The following is a letter I sent to The New Yorker magazine commenting on the referenced article. It did not get published. Rivka Galchen in Sound Affects (Oct. 17, 2022) mentions that “sound engineering is ancient” and cites the examples of Hagia Sophia and Chichén Itzá. I would like to point out that the architecture…

I have come across a striking dichotomy about what we learn about Ancient Greece’s greatness and accomplishments. That subject is usually treated in a lopsided manner. In school, in books, magazine articles, etc. we hear about the stupendous manifestations of that civilization’s architectural, sculptural, literary, philosophical, military, political and overall cultural achievements. Most frequently an…

After living for well over half a century in this land of exceptionalisms I have made some observations that have left me puzzled if not bewildered. I want to share some of these American idiosyncrasies with you. Units of Measurement We all know the centuries-old resistance of the US to adopt the metric system –…

Herein I describe our experiences during our trip to the Greek island of Syros in the company of Paul and Mary (names changed for anonymity), in July 2015. Don’t misunderstand me. I like Paul with all his idiosyncratic warts. We first met him and his wife Mary on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts in…