August 21st, 2017 | Architecture and Design, General, Politics, Society at Large, transportation, Travel, United States
I’ve got an old mule and her name is Sal Fifteen years on the Erie Canal She’s a good old worker and a good old pal Fifteen years on the Erie Canal … Low bridge, everybody down Low bridge cause we’re coming to a town And you’ll always know your...
July 5th, 2017 | Friends, General, Politics, social media, Society at Large
As I write this, Donald John Trump has been President of the United States for 161 days—not quite 24 weeks. He has been, as he tweets it, “modern-day presidential.” I can’t even begin to parse that; obviously such presidential qualities as dignity, humanity and...
July 2nd, 2017 | Education, General, literature and poetry, Memory, Politics, Society at Large
In the course of making some point or other, I asked the high-school age students in my summer workshop what their favorite books were. Any book, I said, it could even be a picture book you read with your parents. Not one of the eight mentioned a book. Finally, a lad...
July 1st, 2017 | Europe, Friends, transportation, Travel
Inbound from Charles de Gaulle-Roissy airport, all had gone smoothly until we were in a taxi headed into Paris—at a crawl. The traffic was simply horrific, as bad as anything I have experienced from route 128 outside Boston to any freeway from San Diego to Los...
May 31st, 2017 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, Society at Large, Time Passes, Travel
“Alistair Horne, Vivid War Historian and Onetime British Spy, Dies at 91.” The headline in today’s New York Times would have caught my eye any morning. Right now, however, I am up to page 306 of Horne’s Seven Ages of Paris, engrossed in his narrative of the years...
May 30th, 2017 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Europe, General, Travel
We once taste-tested lobster rolls in Maine and coastal New Hampshire. Somewhat to our surprise, the most famous joint did not provide the best. A few days into this trip, we realized a similar project was underway. Having shoehorned ourselves out of those coach-class...
May 19th, 2017 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, Matters of the Spirit, Memory, Popular Culture, Time Passes, Travel
The novelist Federico Mocci (b. 1963) published a story in 2006 called Ho Voglia di Te (“I want you”), some variation on the star-crossed lovers theme, in which a doomed pair affix a lock to the Milvian Bridge in the northern suburbs of Rome as a symbol of their...
May 13th, 2017 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Europe, General, Popular Culture, Shopping, Society at Large, Travel
Apparently, our neighborhood does not exist. Consult a tourist guide like Eyewitness Paris and there is an empty white space where one might expect to find Batignolles. The teal-green blob of Montmartre floats in a void separate from the colors that identify the...
May 10th, 2017 | Architecture and Design, Europe, Family, Friends, General, Memory, Travel, visual arts
Gounod’s Faust was the first opera I ever saw, and I saw it at Palais Charles Garnier in Paris in March 1970. As we ascended the massive stair forty-eight years later, studied Marc Chagall’s rainbow of a ceiling and gazed out over the loggia outside the ornate Grand...
May 9th, 2017 | Europe, General, literature and poetry, Politics, Shopping, Travel
What good American doesn’t dream of a pied à terre in Paris, especially now that we have elected Donald Trump president, lying, ignorant bully that he is, and the French opted for the rational and articulate Emmanuel Macron over harridan of the Far Right, Marine Le...
