October 2014

OCTOBER 2014 

Wednesday  1 October

Sunday evening Va fell off the chair at David’s birthday party here.  Monday we got her new glasses at AllainAfflelou and found the elevator was broken.  We stayed the night at Ibis.  I climbed 11 floors to get our suitcase for the night and 11 floors with it back down.  Worried about a heart attack the next night, not that night, because my leg muscles felt it more a day later than that same night.  Tuesday by 3 the elevator was fixed.  I got the suitcase out of the locker and Willow lay down for a nap.  This morning at 8 the elevator was out again.  We stayed in and did stuff.  Cécile showed up at noon just as we were to go out.  We all ended up together downstairs at Il Fillippo after I lost my cool with the Italian boss of the moving company which had tied up the elevator this morning after the elevator repair guys had come to fix it once more.  The tall Italian guy said they were ones who came on Monday to free the woman who got stuck in the elevator and that a first group had moved someone out, broken the lift and taken off. 

I just took the glasses back over because it looked like they were not as well fixed as we had thought.  The young Chinese woman was not there, of course, but her colleague, the young man in the suit with the big nose that looks perfect behind his heavy horn-rimmed glasses worked on them a whie and then assured me they are secure and will not fall out, the lenses.  While I waited I phone Russo’s office in Plymouth.  We have no way to get a fax so I suggested they print out the prescription, take a photo of it and email the jpeg.  See if that happens.

Catherine and Emrys arrive Thursday night.  We’re all curious to see how Emrys will be as a teen.  Donald is off on his tour of the Baltics. 

Did I ever hear Phil talk about being in China and the Soviet Union before?  email from him

Your troubles with an elevator remind me of my experiences in the Soviet Union and China years ago.

In the Soviet Union in 1977, they built big skyscrapers 25 and 30 stories high with only one elevator.   One waited forever and when the elevator finally arrived it was packed with people and there was no room for anyone else.   In Beijing, they built new workers' housing 25 or 30 stories high and, as in the Soviet model, had only one elevator which, we were told, almost never worked.   So "the workers" had to hoof it up 25 stories at the end of a work day.   And if grandma wanted some rice she had to hoof it down 25  and then back up 25.   Didn't see too many fat workers or grandmas in China in 1988.  Things may have gotten better by now.   For one thing, all the grandmas have probably died of heart attacks on the stairs of these buildings.

So good luck with your elevator in socialist France, which may get some things very right while getting other things very wrong.   BTW, when do you escape the humidity and return to the White Mountains?

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How did I never realize that you spent some time in both Soviet Union and China??  So you were CIA after all ! :-)

Greene--I can picture the cover of the UK paperback of Brighton Rock that I read/tried to read and like you really got little.  Did I think then or later was it said in hindsight that Greene's portrait of those characters showed up later more successfully in "Clockwork Orange" by _____.

Greene "channeled" something about his time I guess is what I wanted to say about his weird mix of moralism and moral confusions, return to Catholicism even if half-assedly in post-war West, the collapse and end of the british empire, scuzziness in general as someone had to frame it and he somehow stepped into the empty niche and made it work for him.  That plus the cold war interest in spies and double-crossings and who was going to keep winning.

Did you see the piece in NYRB about Heidegger's black notebooks and the fact that he really was a Nazi and how does that now affect his reputation as a great philosopher.  Had me looking up Hannah Arendt's story on wiki---amazing in its own right, especially since she was in love with him, the whole German-Jewish macrocosm in one personal relationship.
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I went over to help Cécile for a moment.  The crêche called and said Eliot was having a bad asthma attack and could she come get him early.  Emma was still sleeping, so I stayed there while she went to get Eliot. 

Willow now addressing the birth announcements.  Earlier we walked to Office Depot to get a real clipboard. 

Thursday afternoon  Oct 2   Lunch at Au Vent du Sable because Willow wanted the sorbets again.  Before that walking around the Parc Commerce at last.  Four men playing boul.  Boulistes. 

Corbel.  font. 
from Phil a day ago
J. P. Jones
10:09 PM (20 hours ago)


to me




Soviet Union:   1977.   Trip was organized for county officials by the National Association of Counties, for which I worked.  NACo staff were invited along to help out if necessary.   Went to Moscow,  Leningrad, and Talinn in Estonia.   In Moscow, county officials met with Soviet local gov't officials.   County officials explained (via interpreters) that the problem in the US was that officials in Washington got all their education and information from professors at places like the Kennedy school at Harvard -in other words, from people who had no clue what the real world was like.   It was left up to county officials to try to make the Federal government programs work in the real world.   To our great surprise, the Soviet local officials began to nod their heads vigorously and said that it was the same for them.   "Idiots" from Moscow State University designed programs that were virtually impossible to make work, yet local officials were expected to make them work.   We left the local Soviet officials with an expression they had never heard before:  "Where the tire hits the road."

Another surprise:  Stores in Talinn had much better products and displays than stores in Leningrad and Moscow.  In Moscow, cruddy, poorly made products were literally dumped into stalls at the famous "GUM" department store.  Want shoes?   There was a  pile in one of the GUM stalls.  Hunt around and see if you could find a matching pair that fit you.   And there was always a long line to get at those piles of crap.

Leningrad looked dingy, peeling paint, etc.  Moscow old city was very colorful and somewhat well preserved, but Stalinist suburbs were gray and dismal looking.

China:  1988.  Part of Peg's MBA at Wharton required a class trip to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Beijing.   I was able to tag along.   The stores in China were as bad or worse than the GUM store in Moscow.  Chinese people would spit anywhere - indoors as well as outdoors.  Store floors covered with spit and sometimes baby shit.   Gazillions of peasants - even in downtown Shanghai.  People in Beijing much more political and anti-capitalist than people in Shanghai.  Beijing sits in middle of northern desert.  Not much natural water.  Rest room at Forbidden City was the most disgusting I've ever encountered anywhere.  

In both countries, we saw worker resentment toward us "capitalists."   In China, a woman cleaning a walkway purposefully brushed dirty water onto our shoes.  In Russia, waiters practically went on strike when asked for one more bottle of something.  "Workers' paradise means consumers' hell." Really saw how communism had bred hostility, fear, resentment, and no trust in anyone.   And no one is more greedy and materialist than a communist.   Thousands and perhaps millions of these people from Russia, Eastern Europe and China have now moved to the US and western Europe.  Whoopee.   With them and ISIL veterans now living among us, things are really lookin' up.
P

PS  How's your French?   Did you ever take French in school?

------

we went out to check out Speed Rabbit Pizza and on the corner the kids hailed us and we all went to General Beuret for dinner.  They had had a great afternoon at Lambert, Emma played with Louise and her sister, and their father is “the finest man I’ve ever met in Paris” says Cécile.  Now to watch some tv and wait for Catherine and Emrys. 

Friday morning  10:22  C&E got off about twenty minutes ago.  I do now have a cold.  Willow fell during the wee hours but I managed to catch her somewhat and soften the settling onto the floor in sitting position right by the bed.  Catherine came and helped me get her up.  All’s well again now.  Except for my cold but am taking the cold and sinus and pseudophed which turns out to be pretty exactly Doliprane---tylenol and pseudophed. 

October 3  Friday   Tonight we have Dave’s salsa trio at the Ben Franklin. 

Saturday Oct 4  almost 6 pm  Cath & E off to an evening of film at the Cinematheque Française with their friend Marie.  Willow has a pedometer count over 6k--6921--highest it has been in at least ten days.  We walked up to the Branly, stopping for a sandwich at a bistro off the champs de mars on Ave de la Bourdoannais.  In the Branly it was the tattoo exhibit.  I was feeling really tired and wiped out by my cold and/or cold medicine so I didn’t enjoy it much.  Typically comprehensive and detailed show, though.  Bought a post card to send to Leif Anderson but now have to look up his shop address.  The Franklin was a fun night.  A table of real fans finally got up and danced after Emma and Cécile danced first.  Emma loved dancing almost the whole evening.  Emrys and Catherine seemed to enjoy it all.  Today we walked up to the Branly, saw the tattoo show.  Bought some things in the shop and then had a super gouté back on La Bourdonnais.  Catherine called to say they were at the door.  We hailed a taxi, phoned, and got there.  Now Cécile has messaged asking us to sit Eliot tonight while they go to a movie.  Emma seems to be off with the parents? 

Two Asian girls are here doing the free cleaning we had asked Short-Time to come through with. 

Sunday  October  5 

Cath & Em out for a walk.  10:40 am  Party starts in an hour or so.  Last night we baby sat until after midnight.  Before that we went to the Korean restaurant across the street, Gwon’s Dining.  Suitable for Blance Nuit since it has a beautiful white and antique wood decor.  Delicious meal, maybe the best so this trip. 
Dessertennes and kids and babes all coming here for a meal.  Not terrace weather today, though.  Colder and overcast and windy.  We fell asleep on their couch.  Next time we have to have them set up the sofa bed so we can sleep. 

Finally we got to the Branly yesterday.  Tattoos. 

Nap.  Laundry, Cécile’s, finishing up.  Short walk after Lait Russe for Willow. 

Monday almost 6:30pm    Oct  6  

No clear word on whether kids have power yet but they must.  Finally a really good rainy day.  Heavy clouds, steady drizzle, winds, going to be same, worse tomorrow.   I had two short walks, Willow had one short short one and has been on the computer most of the afternoon working on her paper. 

Emrys and Catherine got off after a brief breakfast this morning.  They were heading for Cluny and the Unicorn tapestries.  Their train left at noon.  I got a good nap but my nose still feels hyperactive.  I am starting to worry about our three days in the hotel at the end, wondering if Ibis will be too stark for these rainy days.   But then when you look at photos of “better” hotels you say what exactly would we be getting for all that extra outlay of cash? 

Tues Oct 7   morning  Dave called to say the power guy is coming sometime today.  After lunch he wants us to go to their place to cover at 3 in case hes’ not yet arrived.  Dave takes Emma someplace then.  Sunny at first but now cooler again.  I took a short walk, hope my cold is finally clearing. 

email to Phil---he sent news that NH is number one in the nation for quality of life according to Yahoo financial.  ! 

blustery here today--at last--- feels a bit raw, we had remarkable
luck with the sunshine though----

friend and former sister-in-law (Rick's third wife) Catherine Taylor just
visited from her sabbatical in London.  She has a degree from
Iowa workshop in non-fiction.  50  second book got good reviews,
new book she is thrilled she just got an agent for, for the first time.
Book on Drones and Puppets---no title yet--we suggested Game
of Drones or Dronepuppets.  Given the topicality, she could get
a bigger hit on this one.  Her earlier book was a memoir--Apart--
about her visits to her mother's South African home and relatives.
Virginia loved it but I haven't read it.  She teaches at Ithaca
College, Cornell grad.

-------

Rick's second wife, Gloria Brown, died earlier this year.  Always a health
nut etc, she--and, apparently her doctor, believed she was gluten intolerant
and went with all that diet stuff.  Died of ovarian cancer--diagnosed too
late.  Maybe poverty a factor too, couldn't get to a better doctor--but this
is all very distant third party account by now.  They divorced about
twenty some years ago.

We're planning to go see the big Hokusai show tomorrow.  We like the
anthro musuem that is close-by just for walking there and through, so
we saw more tattoos than we had ever wanted to, big show on tattooing
there.  Less and less interest in any of these museum shows.

Maybe the "impact" of "70" will fade and we will feel this Resurgance!!  so that's what Didi and Gogo were waiting for.  Godot indeed.

Not that keen to be going to lunch but it will be ok and get us out to the periphery of the city for a view of a new location---Porte Dorée. 

late Friday afternoon   Oct 10

catching up on news and timeline
today musée arts decoratif to walk inside six Architectual Digest cabanas, each by a different designer.  Yesterday a slow day, wonderful visit with Emma and Dave in the Lambert in the afternoon sunshine.  Earlier an authentic Gallician meal at Chez Eusebio.  Day before Hokusai at the Grand Palais, lovely sunshine after and stroll across the Pont Alexandre III at last. 

emails from Phil
Oh, Bob, Bob, Bob, if you believe this guy you probably doubt the existence of Saddam Husseine's  weapons of mass destruction, which all REAL Americans know did exist.   You probably also believe in Eisenhower's misguided warning about a military-industrial complex taking over this country.  Tut, tut. tut,  you've just got to get back with the program, Bob.  Try attending a few NFL football games when you get back here to God's country and be sure to salute the flag when the military "honor guard" brings out "old glory."   Also cheer with everyone else when the PA system announces that five seats have been donated to "our wounded veterans."  Because if you don't get back into line soon, tea party patriots will burn your house down.

For the Cumberland tea party and  NRA boosters and club,

X (his mark)
------------------
I  was kidding around in my response to the article from The Nation, but I touched on a subject that has really begun to bother me.  Increasingly, it seems to me, the US is conflating sports, especially professional sports, with veneration of the military and patriotism.   We see military craft fly-overs at big NFL games and, although I feel sympathy for seriously  wounded veterans, I find it ludicrous that we act as if the best thing  these veterans can do with their time is attend a ball game.   That's nuts!  Recently, not only do the Washington Nationals  baseball team begin their ball games with some military band playing  "The Star Spangled Banner," they bring out the military band for "God Bless America" for the 7th inning stretch.

BTW:  I went to one Washington Nationals game this summer and was so turned off by the unending noise, hoopla, and jingoistic patriotism that I've sworn to never attend another professional ball game of any kind for the rest of my life.   Which is a shame because I used to like to wait for one pleasant summer evening and buy a cheap ticket for a seat high up in the stands where I could catch breezes, watch the sun go down, and enjoy a slow moving, leisurely game down below on a nice green field. Not possible any more.   Tickets used to be $3 or  $5.  Now the tickets are $35 and it's $5 for a diet Coke!  The noise-making machines are deafening.  And then there's this issue about militarism mixed into everything that's going on.

--------moi
Seems to me that with the Bush wars we've had this conflation of sports, patriotism and the war machines ratcheting upward and upward for fifteen years so so.  Ike worried about the military industrial complex:  now that industry has abadoned the country it has been replaced by the sports-media-entertainment and military complex.  Heroes, patriots, thank-you-for-your-service military stars and bars pensioners and stooges, teamed with the sports gods who are beyond cross examination of any kind for their behavior.

Fine day today at a small wing of the Louvre no one goes to, decorative arts.  Two years ago we saw Ralph Lauren's wonderful car collection; this time rooms straight out of architectual digest, of interest only because that magazine is one you flip through at your hair salon but this time you got to see what that cotton candy imagery is made of---costly items of every sort.  Ok for a few hours but then it all cloys as I think, really, it is supposed to do---some sort of kitschy-campy overload esthetic that the real designers walk through quickly and steal ideas from.  Fun in the sense that back home one never has the chance to see such wonders.

Pays to be exposed over and over to something.  I remember thirty years ago when I saw the Louvre buildings themselves for the first time I was pretty disappointed and shocked.  They looked like very dirty, smaller imitations of the grand buildings along Constitution avenue in DC.  Today we walked
around in the Tuileries in warm fall overcast weather and as I kept looking over the buildings I just marveled at how perfect and astonishing they are.  My eye has gotten schooled by repeated visits to the city and I see it now as I never could have even twenty years ago.  The coherence and scale of the aesthetic--17th, 18th, and 19th Century ideas of how to design a building in the neo-classical variations of elements and decoration, design and detail.  And as you see the city from so many angles it presents, the level of achievement and perfection just keep amazing you.  It feels like such a cliché to try to say these things because so many thousands of people have said it before over and over about the place that you know you can add nothing new.  But it is new for me and as one poster at the news stand today said--we live in a hyper-narcissistic era--so here we are.  

Starting to countdown how many days left.  Might have a pizza with the family later tonight.  I enjoy looking at the skies from our 11th floor terrace window--directly west and since it is always so cloudy, usually a good late afternoon light and sunset display.

late Saturday night Oct 11  Visit with the kids, ice cream, and then they decided they were too tired to go out after all.  Emma sang another song today for her mother, Marie Morel, another of her mother’s friends. 

Earlier we wanted to go see the Unicorn tapestries.  Catherine said she enjoyed them so much.  Only when we got inside did we remember we would have to climb the stairs up and down, good handrails, yes, but still, so we turned around.  The day was made instead by a nice Cuban lunch at a nearby cafe called Cafe Cantante.  Server a beautiful woman who is Cuban.  She had not heard of David’s salsa groups but did know about the tres.   We rode the bus 39 from Vaugirard again.  Message from Cécile when we came out of Cluny helped convince us to hop in a taxi.  The driver said there was a manifestation going on around Tour Montparnasse to protest the poor medical help being given to the workers who constructed the tower and had been exposed to toxic levels of asbsestos and now fifty years later were suffering collapse of their health. 

Yesterday we saw the exhibit of Architectural Digest designers at the Arts Decoratif.  Gorgeous day.  Walked in the Tuileries.  Exhibit was fun, very much what we had expected, like walking into the photos in the magazine.  So ephemeral taste is, you can see it in these displays.  Four or five heavily “into” (still! yawn) mid-century modern, 50s, 60s retro.  Freshest work seemed to us the first we saw, the French team, all bare woods, camp cabin feeling, airy, light, efficient (two offices, one masculine, one feminine), spare, sensuous and elegant.  By contrast many of the other rooms did all the usual heavy showing off of wealth in materials and styles. 

I had Eliot for a long walk today, hour and some, got tired but enjoyed seeing again the park Lambert full of families enjoying themselves, so many young children, parents.  Contrast, welcome, to the hoards of tourists on Saint Germain earlier in the day. 

Sunday Oct 12   1:40  we will go over to sit the sleeping babies soon.  Morning devoted to weighing the travel options for a Loire trip.  We have booked for
this Tuesday and Donald will not go because we’ve taken a pricey route.  We reached him by phone this morning, twice, while he and JJ were scouting a flea market somewhere. 

We’ll see if we get this tour and how it goes.  Includes all of our luxury demands---hotel pick-up and drop-off, small van, small group, three castles and mainly Chenonceaux and according to current weather forecasts, it will be good weather.  Fingers crossed on all counts.

Started reading Calasso last night and found it very exciting.  Just to be reminded that the way poets like Baudelaire think--and feel--is essential to me to, just to remember that the Flatness of journalistic framing of all experience is not the only way to go with our experiences, our “narratives,” our feelings, our responses to and inscriptions by what we live. 

Wednesday  October 15   

Now in the midst of our last full week.  Yesterday we gambled and Won! bigtime.  Bertrand picked us up at Ibis at 6:50 am.  A Canadian guy and his three young daughters and their aunt, his squeeze, were in the van.  I rode in front.  We sped through the dark city.  Bertrand put Singapore-Phuket mogul in his place and I slept as we flew down the highway to Amboise. Bertrand started talking at Amboise and gave us a wonderful compressed overview of castle history in the Loire and from there on he and I enjoyed talking immensely for the rest of the time slots throughout the day and for the drive back.  At Chenonceau we got a huge wheelchair that was actually perfect for the dirt alées.  The chateau was beyond expectations for beauty and charm and impressiveness.  The flowers in the gardens, the landscaping, stole my heart away.  Va had to sit on the first level while I raced up to the two stories above to take fast photos of most of the other rooms.  We got the photos of the river and chateau and gardens we wanted.  Bought two photo books.  Perfect.  Ok lunch at a tavern there. 

version to Phil

I like indeed hearing your take on the IS situation.  Makes much more sense than the newsfeeds.

Yesterday we took a day trip via minivan down into the Loire valley.  Pricey but it paid off because the driver-guide was excellent and the other five passengers were not a bother:  a forty-something Canadian who lives in Singapore, builds hotels in Phuket, was showing his three daughters, 8, 10, and 12, some castles and keeping his hand on the knee of their aunt, his squeeze, pretending to be 24 and maybe 18 if she was lucky.  Main goal was to see the chateau of Chenonceaux, the most famous, small and beautiful with a gallery built on top of a bridge over the river Cher.  Great weather, the place was full of flowers, changed daily, and the gardens also packed with flowers and perfect lawns and hedges.  Open to the public but privately owned by some chocolate family dynasty and boy it was a delight to see how well they keep it up and present it.  We left at 7 and were back home by 7:30.  Also stops at chateau of Amboise, more fortress than castle but DaVinci's tomb in a lovely gothic chapel, and Chambord, huge and ungainly and strange and probably the best medieval example of a project of pure waste.  Never really used much, the king spent a total of fifteen days there.  The hunting ground around it, however, is kept as France's prime hunting ground still---area the size of Paris, wild boar, deer and pheasant, a presidential preserve open only to visiting dignitaries, princes, etc.  The driver told us he had a flourishing walkin-tour business for some years, made good money, but when Lehman brothers fell, his clientele dried up and he went bankrupt and has since recovered working for other firms.  Sorbonne education in history, specialist as a guide in WWI for the western front.  Fun to talk to about all sorts of things.  This was our main splurge-excursion for this trip and it was nice to see the beautiful countryside and villages, even if at some speed.

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Headlines online just now, one about the last use of the guillotine in 1939, remind me that I had a disturbing and grisly nightmare last night involving Dad and somehow his head separting in a fall from his body.  I remembered it after I woke and was disturbed all over again by it.  And now I write it down even fearful that I should because it doesn’t seem necessary or useful to pay attention to such ghoulish imagery whether in a dream or in the news. 

This noon with the fam we had our ritual dinner at Alfaria.  Delicious as always and Emma along, trying to be patient with grown-up behavior.  Finally at one point Dave gave her the floor and she launched into a long story about a bird and a wolf who was using the bird’s bed.  I caught much of it on video, her charming gestures and facial movements and voice. 

thursday  October  16   Night  We did it, I did it, kept Eliot all day.  Up at 6 to be there by 8:30. Cécile and Emma got there about 5:30.  Emma sang us a new song, Marie Sophie, name of one of her classmates.

I’m really tired from the day.  He didn’t eat as much as Dave led me to think he would, had trouble with wheezing and congestion most of the day.  Tried to give him Ventolin three times but couldn’t really hold the tube on his mouth for very long.  Cécile says she has the same trouble. 

Best news:  we can stay here until we leave on the 23rd.  For a few hundred euros.  Pierre said, sure.  Va had me email him last night to ask.  What a relief.  I was dreading the Ibis a little.  And feeling full departure remorse/depression about leaving in general. 

Inchausti told me to watch “Le Week-End” on Netflix but alas we can’t get it here.  Donald is off to Weimar and Freiborg until Sunday and he departs on Monday. 
We are off we think to see the new Sade exhibit at Orsay.  I suspect it will be less interesting than the Angle of the Bizarre that we saw two years ago. 

Friday October 17, just after another gorgeous sunset and sparkly lights on the tower.    We didn’t go to Orsay after all.  Ended up with light lunch at Dave’s with Emma and Eliot.  Then we walked a bit, went to Eusebio’s and ordered the paella for tomorrow.  Willow then read her Scots novel and I walked up to Commerce and zeroed in to my decision to buy the scarf after all at Patronyme.  Come on, the name is so cool, and the shop so toned down, blacks and grays and dark blues and oak flooring and the scarves so nice.  Italian wool, fine blend, with cotton and modal.  Closed when I got there, for afternoon break, back at 3.  Half an hour.  So walked up rue Theatre, same street it is on, and stopped for a coffee and two cookies at the cookie place that imitates Mrs Field’s look and lettering pretty closely but calls itself Cookerie or something like that.  Went back and waited a bit and finally at 3:02 the woman arrived.  I joked about a discount and we chatted.  I got to tell her about David and she was familiar with La Bellevilleoise and brunch there so I told her to look for him there.  Back home we then finished addressing the baby announcements. 

Thanks to Galbaldon, the author of the bodice-ripper, we are reading every evening now.  Nice newsy email from Carole.  Beautiful fall back home as we can see from photos on facebook.  Still wonderful, wonderful weather here.  Warmer tomorrow even.  Paella time.  Kids are on vacation now, will go to San Raph next week. 

But I’m in the middle of my own bodice-ripper novel, the one by Blas de Robles.  No bodices yet but it feels much more “popular” than anything I’ve read for a while.  I’m thinking of him as a younger, French version of Paul Theroux.  But now that I recall, he may be 60, not that much younger.  World traveler, nomad, teaching lots of overseas gigs, writing travelistic novels. 

------------
Hi Carole and Ken
Enjoyed much your newsy letter.  Yes we fly next Thursday the 23rd and will see you at the Kents.

Our great good luck in weather continues most miraculously.  Maybe three or four rainy days and none even really rainy all day.  Maybe one.  Warmish again this weekend--mid 70s.  Never as cool/cold as
it was in Spain in March.

Yesterday our babysitting reached its summit (so far):  we took care of Eliot by ourselves all day.  The Day care workers of France were out on strike on the busiest day of the fall for Dave and C.  But we managed, bottles, pureed squash, applesauce, one diaper change, ventolin for a little wheezing, two naps and a stroller walk.  I was really bushed by the time Cécile got home around 5:30.  But it has felt really good to help them out in various ways as we have been able to and the apartment has been great for that.  Quick pizza meals on the terrace etc.  Final one will be a paella tomorrow evening.  We found an authentic Spanish tavern about two blocks from here.

Only real crisis was a few weeks ago.  We were out for the day and came home around 5 to find that the elevator was broken for our building.  Other tenants were good at explaining for us.  Day or two later we got the fuller story that two different families had moved that weekend, one or both movers damaged the elevator.  No freight or backup elevator.  I quickly booked us a room at the Ibis hotel five minutes down the street.  After I got Virginia into the room I went back and climbed up the eleven floors in the Spiral stairway, packed a few things for the night and climbed back down the Spiral stairway.  It is wider than a medieval castle stairwell and there is a handrail for going up but none for going back down.  Well, made it, heart pounding the rest of the night, but still good night's sleep and we found the elevator working by two pm the next day.  The next morning it did not work again, but thank goodness we were in the apartment together at least and it got another fix and doublecheck by eleven am.

Few days ago we gambled on a pricey day trip to the Loire valley.  We had "lost" on that sort of thing for a trip to Versailles two years ago, the guide wasn't much for the money, but this time we totally "won."  The driver-guide was terrific, three hours down, Amboise for an hour, Chenonceau for two---that was the one we mainly wanted to visit. And Chambord.  I sat in front of the mini-van and enjoyed talking the whole day with Bertrand.  Other travelers were a quiet family, rich young Canadian father from Singapore visiting with his three young daughters and their "aunt," from Thailand, his squeeze, passing for 24, lucky if she was 18, as Bertrand said later.  Chenonceau was even more beautiful than the photos show and the gardens just amazing.  Privately owned still, huge vases of fresh flowers in every room every day.

Lots of other things and mostly just visiting lots with the family in various spare and odd moments without, we hope, getting too much in their way.  We saw two of Dave's gigs, had some good restaurant meals, a few museums, rode on the buses a bit more, enjoyed exploring the neighborhood and its parks.  Oh and a fascinating Architectural Digest exhibit of six rooms by different designers you would have enjoyed.  Emma is a real doll now, sings us songs she makes up and plays on her toy guitar, likes making her brother laugh.

We can see from photos on facebook how beautiful the foliage has been.

See you soon,

Bob and Virginia
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Saturday  October 18   Bells all around have been ringing for over five minutes now, 4:10 on to 4:18.  Wonder why?  Gorgeous gorgeous day and afternoon.  Sunny and warm like a month ago. 

Woke to an email from Jim Atwell with a long story attached called “Cadeau de dieu.”  Wow, how perfect. 

Dear Jim

How wonderful to start the day this morning with the email containing your manuscript.  You have been much on my mind these fast few weeks----so this is why!  We are in the last few days of a nearly seven week stay here in Paris.  The kids moved into a much roomier apartment in August and we rented a small place a few minutes walk away.  Emma now 3, Eliot now 8 months.  We’ve done some fine babysitting duty and enjoyed ambling around the city too.   We are located about two blocks from the famous Rue Vaugirard and sure enough a block from the street is that church dedicated to Bro De LaSalle himself.  So I guess I’ve been thinking of the old boys network and the huge circles of life that bind us all together whether we know it or not. 

Who can know what a vocation is when they are twenty years old?  Who can know what it is when they are eighty?  Unde Cadeau indeed.  When I was twenty it was, though I didn’t know it then, to have met you and spent a bit of time with you.  And then, lo, thirty or so years on, to be with you again.  The sheer gift of it.  And the liberation, the expansiveness of being released into the full savoring of all of life, of each moment of life, from the hindsight all the way around to the second set of memories, hindsight turned through foresight back around into fuller and fuller sight.  Or some such nonsense.  You know what I mean and I’m sure this marvelous fable will say it much better than this. 

So we have been having a wonderful year all around with our travels to Spain in the spring, about a week then in Paris when Eliot had just arrived, and then this fall again.  We turned 70---gasp, how did that happen---and celebrated 45 years together.  I found a perfect pair of sapphire earrings for Virginia, that being the designated symbolic stone, tiny enough to fit the budget and paired with beautiful moonstones above them.  Not sure I had seen a moonstone before but I love the look of them even more than the instense blue sapphires. 

Today at the poste I mailed out some of the birth announcements for the kids and the clerk bore a distinct likeness to you, goatee, salt and pepper hair with bald spot, spectacles similar, twinkle and light in the eyes like yours.  Some gallic blood in your veins there must be. 

Be as well as your bodily “guest” will permit.  I’ve heard it has been a most glorious fall for colors.  Blaze away, dear friend. 

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Getting ready for the fam to arrive in an hour or so.  The church bells have been ringing?  Sunday masses? 

Finished at last the French noir classic The Mad and the Bad by Jean-Patrick Manchette.  NYRB published it in their Classics Original series, brought it back into print.  1972 original.  This a new translation.  Well, it has all the hallmarks of the genre but it didn’t strike me as much.  Like the wine I just opened and started sipping, I’m probably undeducated and missing all the fine points.  The wine critic Roger Voss in Wine Enthusiast says of this wine
“This is a big and full-bodied wine, with its tannins merging with notes of red plum fruit and spicy wood. With a generous feel, it also has a solid, powerful structure that offers the possibility of aging.”  This is pretty much what could be said of this novel.  One blurb on the back cover says: “a clear-eyed, cold-blooded, pitch-perfect work of creative destruction.”  Well, maybe for its day, in France, but now this novel reads like every crime tale on tv or in novels, so far as I can tell.  You wonder at some points if it will tip itself over into self-parody or ironic freefall, but it doesn’t.  It speeds through the plot and blood and gore with a good eye to how it would all look in a movie and that’s about it. 


October 20  Monday 

Yesterday, the zoo.  Dinner at RP’s.  Nathalie, Miu Miu, Zoe and Paul showed up later.  Flor picked us up at the zoo.  Giraffes made the best presentation.  Everyone else asleep in the hot sun.  Except for the human hoardes.  Another beautiful day.  Today supposed to be rainy but almost noon and not yet.  Cooler too.  Checking all points on departure and re-entry.  Still planning the Orsay tomorrow.  Donald goes back today and maybe Clause S arrives?  Not one word from her after two or three attempts to get in touch?  Mission for us today is to buy chocolates for gift distribution and hoarding for ourselves.  Started to read Jim’s fable and maybe I read an earlier version?  Not sure.  Returned the paella dish to Eusebio’s.  Willow now taking a nap at noon.  I woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep, probably around 5 or 6 but am not especially sleepy now. 

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lunch with the kids on Lecourbe at Au Roi du Cafe

searching for Douglas Zullo and I learn a new word--ubeity

Year and Degree
2005, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History of Art.
Abstract
This dissertation explores the exile period work (1979-1999) of the Czech-born writer and artist Jiri Kolar, with particular focus on his two series Kafkova Praha (Kafka’s Prague) and Haskova Praha (Hasek’s Prague). These two series are examined in the context of Kolar’s role in the development of Czech modernism in the twentieth century, his dual status as a poet and visual artist, the series’ connections to the writers for which they are named (Franz Kafka and Jaroslav Hasek), and the artist’s complex relationship with his homeland during his absence from it. Both series illustrate aspects of Kolar’s struggle with his cultural and national identity, as well as his pursuit of a means of expression that could combine characteristics of poetry and visual art. The motifs of concealment, revelation, displacement, ubiety, language, and identity emerge with powerful clarity in Kolar’s work during the two decades around which this dissertation revolves. Although Kolar created Kafka’s Prague just after his forced separation from Czechoslovakia and Hasek’s Prague just after his return home twenty years later, I argue that these two sets of manipulated photographs are not clear brackets around the artist’s exile period. When studied together and with the historical circumstances and events that surround them in mind, they provide important insight into the experience of the displaced east European during and after the Communist period.
Committee
Myroslava Mudrak (Advisor)
Pages
258 p.
Keywords
Kolar, Jiri; Czech art; Prague; Kafka, Franz; Hasek, Jaroslav; Exile; Eastern Europe

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today is Czech art day ---  just saw some classic animated movies at the Chaplin by famed Czech filmmaker

The Mole (in the Czech original called Krtek, or, for little mole, Krteček; Slovak Krtko) is an animated character in a series of cartoons, created by Czech animator Zdeněk Miler in 1956. Since its inception, the character won itself an enormous popularity in many Central European countries, as well as India, China, Russia and Japan.

Maybe Prague will be next on our list for future travels.  ? 

Got past the Chase Auto Pay date without even realizing it.  All’s well at the bank and the monthly statement for next month is way below.  Plus we’ll get the deposit back from Short-Time and the check from the Electric Coop.  Colin is set to pick us up at Logan.  Chugging right along toward the End.  Felt so Frenchified wearing my new scarf today for the first time.  We’ve given up the idea that going to the Orsay for the Sade exhibit is necessary or even interesting.  That is a relief too.  Just hang with Dave and the kids tomorrow I think, shop some more for chocolates to take back. 

Tuesday  21 October  

2:28 pm   Elevator being worked on.  We missed the notice posted in it.  Guy left us come up.  The guy who is going to London next week with his wife.  Now we are ensconced, the elevator will be back by 4 or 6 pm.  High winds outside.  We got a wee wet coming back from Monoprix but we bought some chocolates there that Va thinks will be ok--symbolic.  Yesterday we bought pricey marons glacée for Jessica.  She’d better like them.  We called off the Orsay this morning--Va wanted to read more in her sci-fi-bodice epic and so then we walked some and met up with Dave and Emma coming back from Lambert.  They said there was no one there.  We had pizza and salad at Pizza Flora.  I got out the suitcases and have started to pack.  Emma is going with Miu Miu to Le Chezet tomorrow so today was our good-bye with her.  Might see Dave tomorrow for lunch and the two of them for dinner?  Cécile teaching at Vassar-Wes both today and tomorrow.  Watched Downton Abbey yesterday. 

Nice message via Facebook from former student of five years ago---Kevin McCrae. 

Hey Mr. Garlitz, I don't know if you remember me but I was in your class (I cant remember the name except the fact that we read Charles Bukowski) and it was in the spring of 2009, and I just want to say that to this day, that course, and you yourself have left a huge impact on my life. I just wanted to say that youre an awesome teacher and I appreciate everything that you did for me. Thanks Bob!

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night  packed the bags, 98%.  weather cleared and I took a walk around 6pm.  Now 8:30 time to watch Black List. 

Now I’m at the point where I take the area for granted, maybe being here in general, and I start to see things you never see when you are new to a place and are looking for things to notice.    Wonder if Ubeity theory has a term for this?

Weds   Oct 22

Almost 3.  Back from a nice lunch with Davey, solo, at the little deli-creperie I found on rue Blomet behind the Marie.  Tasty crêpes and great conversation.

We’ll go over around 7 for Sicilian take-out and then they want to go off to a salsa dancing lesson while we babysit for our final evening in Paris.  Colder out but no real rain after the morning mists.  Sure was dark when I went out for my walk at 7:40 this morning. 

above pasted in from twitter, Jonathan Gibbs, tinycamels,  from Eric Chevillard.  who he?


Night.   Great farewell dinner with the kids.  Dave ordered from Croccante the Sicilian place they found and like so much.  We drove there in an AutoLib to
pick it up.  Fabulous risotto with mushrooms and truffles!  Pizza and salads and then fabulous tiramisu and panacotta----probably the best we’ve ever tasted.  Eliot in great spirits.  Fun chatting about how great the whole visit has gone, Cécile’s new crop of Vassar-Wes kids, etc.  They will drive to San Raph on Saturday, picking up Emma near Chezet.  Annie will drive her the hour over to the main highway. 

Friday  October  24

About 1pm.  Email to Phil sums up the key points
About two hours from Boston we did indeed have a great deal of turbulence, winds.  Probably we were around 32-37,000 feet.  Lasted longer than "normal" whatever that is.  No easy trick to keep your mind from racing over the possibilities, still you worry and then not worry and somehow hang on.  Later, just as we were descending, it must have caught up with Va because she threw up into the little white bag, something neither of us have ever done.  It didn't help that she had been trying to keep reading subtitles on a movie.  If she had turned it off . . . etc.

But otherwise, the trip was good and that particular plane, air france, had the best leg room for economy class we've ever had I think.

That astrology chart drew so many comments!  I would look at horoscope every day too if I got the paper.  The other item I posted no one "liked" (so dumb).  It was about how scientists are discovering just how much the month you're born in "determines" later life features of your personality.  I.e. astrology re-born.  Man, you gotta love social and psychological "science."

I could see trying to read Proust again---maybe a much slower "commitment."  I did it in a year and there was that "project" feel to it, willpower and full-steam ahead, and yet it lingers as this vast dream-like reality that forces you to slow down considerably and take it as it is.  What I remember most clearly and most powerfully is how after those volumes of longeurs Proust pulls together the final volume and all the threads of the stories and memories, characters, moods etc, the whole architecture of the work, can be seen at last and by god it works and the mastery of it is astonishing.

Va is a much faster reader than I am.  She's now on volume 4 of this bodice-ripper epic about Scotland in the 17th century and it bothers me, four volumes of 900 pages.  But she has a lot of time too.

This morning we went out for breakfast to a good new diner sort of place.   Pumpkin pancakes, bacon and a sausage patty for me.  So good.  Maple syrup.  Now to get through the back and forthing of energy with the jetlag, time shift body adjustments.   Paris and Plymouth feel like alien worlds.  Not even parallel realities.

Addressing and mailing those birth announcements is one of the ways we tried to help the kids.  Very satisfying visit for that, doing odds and ends for them and giving them a place close-by where they could get a break from their grind and the added reality of not one, count 'em, but two kids!  Made us glad again that we had made the right choice by default or daze or choice to have one and not two.  Now they have a vacation period and friends of her parents have loaned them their apartment down on the riviera, so after a nine-hour drive they will have a week or so of basking in some sunshine.   Here it is not that cold yet but wet and damp, leaves everywhere.  We can see how beautiful the foliage
was this year.

Come up for Thanksgiving, you two.  Get your mind off housing searching--where to retire to.  After three or four days here you can fly back or drive back and say well we know it will never be new england!    Some old acquaintances just retired from central valley California to bangor, maine.  !
We'll see them this weekend at a party---can't wait to find you what they were thinking.
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We had to wait for Colin about two hours in the terminal last night.  He was a prince to come for us.  Turns out he has a girl friend and is taking her to the Pat Metheny concert we gave him ticket money for.  Glad to hear it.  One more suitcase to empty and then heat up soup we brought from Dot’s Bistro after breakfast there. 

Almost 8:30 pm now.  Tired but did not nap as Ewillow did. 

Will Haring posted a piece about being an Empath on Facebook and I’ve been reading about it and applying it to myself throughout the day, in between all the active things like unpacking and sending payments and cooking lunch and dinner.  It is a link back to all the other such things I’ve attached myself to over the years, myers-briggs, etc, but something in this Empath descriptoring appeals now and I am using it to re-enter everything.  The time in Paris was really a sort of retreat.  Silence and a private apartment, the kids and their kids, but not much else.  The parks and the city streets.  Beauty all around. 

I lost the email I thought I had sent in which I quoted the last line of the Maestro movie about beauty.  Have to get that line somehow.  One writer on being an Empath clearly says overeating is one key way E’s try to protect themselves from all the emotional intrusiveness of others.  Oppression.  Just recently I bought these books by the younger French writer and now I wonder if constantly juggling information from all the magazines and “interests” might be just a way to be an unhappy Empath, never quite able to protect myself from all the surrounding noise. 

Will just replied to my query:  he said (am I an Empath?) “Yes, but you know how to turn it off.”   Pretty interesting that he can tell that. 

Saturday morning

Chat with Will will be it, figured this out during last night’s sleeping and waking cycles.  Got in a morning walk and it is glorious out today. 
It
9 pm after    Dinner at Italian farmhouse with Widge, Bob and Nancy.  They stopped around 4:30 and we had a good visit.  Drove down from Cathy and Joel’s new place on a lake near Orono.  Nancy loves Outlander, Cathy has read all eight volumes.  Found out I can buy “Maestro” on french amazon.  Will wait to see if that compulsion dies off. 

Sunday night

Monday morning  October  27

Willow making a day of the dead skull out of almond paste.  Sunny and brilliant and windy, cold.  Getting colder end of the week.  Sensing at last the differences in general humidity and what that means for bodily functions.  Today my nose feels better than it has for a number of weeks.  Today humidity in Paris is 72%; here it is so neglible it is not given a number on Wunderground.  Plus we have Ozone in the air.  But Weather channel says we have 73% humidity too.  Also says Paris has 82% humidity. 

Finished Jim’s fable.  Last line will be noted by his future psychobiographic critics: “And those who had no voices joined in, beating time softly on the stone floor with whatever limbs they could command.”   Parkinsons, ye who inhabit parts of Jim’s current body, be placed on record---you too praise God and take Jim to his final resting place. 
Willow and I managed to make a fair skeleton head and coated it with some sugary sprinkles.   Forgot the dentist had moved.  Walked over and got the reminder posted on the door.  The hygenist seemed especiallly talkative but that might be American friendliness in contrast with French public courtesy. 

Fascinating that Jim’s tale is wholly in a French fable style.  Wonder where that is from?  His childhood with French, Ursuline? nuns? 

His use of the “monster,” the boy who sings divinely and who is covered with a fine animal coat of gray hair, rather perfectly demonstrates Bataille’s sense of the monstrous, not that Jim knew that. 

Part at Widge’s by and for Bob and Nancy.  usual suspects there including Alastair and Chris Craig, Deachman’s, Taffe’s, etc.  Nice but felt weird, either because of jetlag or because we rarely see everyone gathered like that and because we had had our own private visit with McD’s on Saturday. 

Oct 28  Tuesday   Doña Catrina day

Catching up with recorded shows.  Thought about the Empath discussions---made a lot of sense, so much so that I marveled that in all my obsessive scanning of E-gram and Myers Briggs etc I never came across this stuff or if I did I never really comprehended it.  Never considered that when I feel emotional confusions it may not be my interiority as much as my empathetic picking up of feelings in people around me--that it is the sensitivity and “channeling” of the atmosphere rather than being from within.  Porous borders and boundaries.  Permeable.  Weak or wavery filtering.  That makes so much sense, have I been blinded by that all this time? 

Yesterday’s get-together at Widge’s for the McDs.  Strange, really, how it felt.  So many historic resonances and so little present-time, real-time satisfaction.  It felt tiring and more irritating than pleasant.  Chatted with various, enjoyed in some ways and yet it wasn’t enjoyable.  Partly or largely because the Kent’s house is not comfortable at all.  All hard surfaces, historic museum quality with nothing warm or inviting or sensuous about it.  No comfy sofas, soft chairs, space for people to gather and recline.  No chance for a good talk with anyone.  Bad time of day---after the faculty meeting sort of timing.  After classes and before dinner.  Who enjoys that anymore?  Lunch coming up with Ferlands and Heusers on Thursday.  That will be much more enjoyable.  Nancy squeezed us in on Sunday afternoon.  It was fun but we’re on the margins still.  Oh well, ancient history. 

Today Dick Hunnewell said the gossip now is that Sara Jane was forced to resign.  And that maybe the whole admin will be cleaned out, reshuffled.  But how good has faculty gossip ever been.  He’s doing a semester sabbatical this spring and his project is to work with a new prof in biz dept to put his Mesoamerican course online.  Sigh.  So my guesswork privately is that Dick Hage would be someone who would be helping ease Sara Jane out.  Hage got Keefe to retire.  Hage and who else?  And will Julie be translated somewhere else?  Ancient history and embarassing I should piece together things with pretend interest.  Herewith once more my susceptibility to every story that comes along, any partial story that can take over.  Hence the fantasy-dream of “the novel” in which the main character refuses to be made ill any more by other people’s stories.  He will deliver the package but know nothing about the parties on either end.  My dream is to drive a truck for UPS. 

WEDS  29
Setting off for beantown.  Came to me during the night that of course the powers on campus running things are Hage and Fischler (and Fischler son).  Probably a few others.  But based on the way they looked saying hello on Monday at the Kents, you could see it written all over their sneaky, shady faces.  And now to hear from Dick H that Egbert is “back” as a/the faculty power broker or frontman, why there you have it.  Hage and his new replacement and who else?  Well, we’ll see if and when any of us ever hear anything more about any of this.   Meanwhile, I’ll play dumb once more.  Just like the man who pretended to be in a coma for two years in England to escape prosecution for something. 

Thurs night Oct 30   Ewillow very down earlier this evening, just before and after dinner.  Distraught about how poor her presentation to Dick’s class was on Tuesday.  Spiraling around other points of presumed failure and guilt, like the one or two times we left David alone when he was a child and how we might have lost him.  We told the story of Acapulco today at lunch with Carole and Keith and Gloria.  Laconia at the new Local Eatery.  Used to be the Black Cat Cafe.  Inflated prices and good-ok but not as super as had been reported (originally, for Carole?, by the woman from whom they had rented the apartment in Paris (in the 16th). 
Va didn’t want me to say she (and Nancy and Cathie Baines) love Outlander for fear it would seem frivolous and worthless.   Hairdresser didn’t work out, Tracy called to cancel because she was sick.  Ken also feeling under the weather. 

Steaming through Jeremy Biles’ book on Bataille.  Enjoying it even as it is repetitious and labored.  Almost as though I recognize that graduate student agony from firsthand experience. 

Friday  Oct 31  Halloween  4:16  Nap.  First day of swimming, perfect, no one there, pool nice and toasty.  Waiting for trick or treaters later this evening. 

It is curious that I am reading this Biles book on Bataille.  Why on earth and what a slender thread of chance seems to have triggered it.  Donald talked about David Tracy (earlier Feeney had announced his interest in divinity school including Chicago and I had admitted to a sort of belated jealousy that he would be able to pursue that notion whereas I had not).  Then after I asked him who David thought was now outstanding at Chicago in his place, David T thought the fellow who replaced him was---Jean-Luc Marion.  I looked up Marion to find out he was very Catholic even while he had studied under Derrida et al.  And I found Biles’ essay in which he seemed to attack Marion for not having addressed fully enough the sort of thought found in Bataille.  Then I found out that Jeremy Biles wrote his thesis on Bataille and dedicated it to David Tracy and his other div school professor, Françios Meltzer.  Well, not dedicated, but thanks to them, his committee.  So I ordered the book and once I got home and found it here I decided to read it at once and to read it intensely, pencil in hand, marking it up the way I used to read books all the time.  “chance reveals a contradiction at the heart of existence, an irresolvable contradiction that provokes desire while resolutely failing to satisfy it.  114 in Biles, summarizing Weil.