Tidying Up the Flophouse

A few months ago my mother suggested that my housekeeping was not all that it could be.  My blog was messy and she suggested that I start grouping topics by theme so that things were easier to find.  Now I may be a lady of a certain age but I always always listen to my mother.  So I started adding links to the right-hand sidebar which worked fine for awhile.

Today there are over 300 posts at the Flophouse and that sidebar was starting to fill up.  So last week I started sorting and organizing in between reading and answering ads.

Five Pages for the most popular Flophouse themes:  Instead of having the links on the sidebar, I created separate pages for each theme so, if you are interested, for example, in reading about How to Raise Frenchlings, you can just go to the page and read them in the order they were written.  Here are the other four themes with links to posts I think are particularly pertinent:

European Blue Card - All the posts going back to last year when I first took up this topic.  There is specific country information posted as it came in but also links to resources that might be useful like the EU Directive creating the Blue Card,  Recognition of Academic Credentials, the excellent CEDEFOP site and their Studies of the EU Job Market, and, of course, the very new (and very well done) EU Immigration Portal.

The Diaspora Tax War of 2012 - Posts about the war that the U.S. government has decided to wage against its citizens and Green Card holders abroad.  The American Diaspora is fighting back and I think 2012 may be THE year that the diaspora unites and roars.  To understand what all the fuss is about I suggest the following posts:  Hard Times for the American Diaspora,  The 2012 Diaspora Tax Wars,  The Consequences of Being a U.S. Person, and Why You Should Care about FATCA.

Citizenship - Posts about dual (plural) nationality, methods for acquiring and losing citizenship and the evolution of my thinking about becoming a citizen of my host country, France.  From Always a Resident.  Never a Citizen to The Narcissism of Difference.

Reflections on Crossing Cultures - My thoughts about being an French immigrant/American emigrant who has lived nearly half her life outside of her home country:  Immigrant Rage, Alien, Love Where You're From but Bloom Where You're Planted, The People Paradox of Globalization, Fairy Tales. 

I will stop there and leave the book reviews, reading lists and Flophouse favorite people and places for another day (spring cleaning, perhaps?)

And while I have my Mac in hand (actually lap) this morning I would like to thank each and every one of you for taking the time out of your busy days to come and read the Flophouse.  I consider it an enormous honor to have readers and I deeply appreciate your visits, your emails and your comments.

If you have suggestions for how to make the Flophouse better, or you have topics to propose, just send me an email (v_ferauge@yahoo.com).

Bon weekend!