As the editor of Wristwatch Annual for Abbeville Press, and a freelance journalist, I have created this site for the pleasure and curiosity of watch fans, collectors, and people interested in an industry that brilliantly combines art, engineering , and occasionally even clever marketing. You can find reports on events, like the former Baselworld, close encounters with specific brands, talks with creative people, peripheral products, and anything that might relate to the world of beautiful items and even artistic ones. That is the idea behind Carefree Watching, a title I borrowed from the first chapter of the Zhuangzi, the seminal work of Daoist philosophy, that advises a goal-free and easy wandering through life with an open, yet active mind. I’m grateful for the title to Prof. Hans-Georg Moeller, whose YouTube channel, Carefree Wandering, has been an inspiration and very instructive.

Who am I? I was born in NY City into a family of photographers and grew up in Paris, London, and Geneva amongst creative people, mostly (biography is being slowly written). We had no television, but lots of books, and were film buffs. My father had a very critical eye and was what the Germans would call a verkrachter Filmregisseur, so we learned how to “read” films early on. I will write about the odd movie, but  it’s where I tend to pull out the knives.

Politics, history, and literature were big topics of conversation, and so ultimately journalism seemed like a good idea, since I have liked writing since about the age of 9, when I was shown a thesaurus… Later, I studied history and German (double B. A.), then communication (M. A.), worked at WFCR in Amherst, Massachusetts as a classical music announcer (Daybreak, just before Morning Pro Musica, for the old guard listeners of  New England Public Radio), and went on to work in radio and print after moving back to Europe. My areas of interest swung from technology and science, to political events, culture, human interest and travel. I keep a second site (journos-blotter.com) for miscellaneous articles, from wayside tales, to personal matters, and, of course, political observations.

In 2007, I was invited to edit a business magazine in Basel, and was put on the Savoir Vivre section, among others, which included the “watch beat.” Until then, I had no interest in watches. But within a few months, I had toured Blancpain, written up an interview with Caroline Scheufele (of Chopard), and — this was key — done a story on MB&F following a two-hour conversation with Max Büsser. I became a convert.

In 2010, I took over the editing of Wristwatch Annual after meeting Elizabeth Doerr, who was the editor of this wonderful book for years. She still writes the Independents chapter for the book. It is a wonderful labor of love, and I am always happy to hear that people collect it. I’ll have more to say about it in another posting.

Enjoy browsing the site, subscribe, please, and if you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate. I’ll do my best to keep feeding the site with material, long and short. As a side note: Time is elastic, it’s duration, it’s oddly enough timeless. The world is frenzied enough, so I tend to take my time when writing up tghe encounters. Also, I have to earn a living… Don’t we all.

• Personal notes
• Time Machines
• Watch Crafts
• Watch Events
• Watch People
• Watch Periphery
• Watch words
• Watches and horology

Carefree Watching