Surprise and Love

Paris is the kind of lover you always wish you had.  It is quiet when that is your mood - raucous and fun on the other hand if that is what you yearn for- and always, always, if you are open to it, full of surprises.

Take the last few days.

One day, I sought calm, so I sat in a park with the birds, a breeze and the intermittent sun (it IS September, a month during which one always carries her parapluie) and read a book and wrote quietly on my wonderful new, light computer that is easily stuffable into a less than gigantic back pack.

Then another day I again was looking for  calm and an emotional and spiritual experience when I sat in the back of the church before the 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning service at St. Etienne du Mont - and I did, indeed, find what I sought since it is during that time when the grand and beautiful old church is solemn and silent so that  the calm washes over you .

I attended the service to continue my quietude and also experience the accompanying sounds of the St Etienne organ, not knowing that there was to be much more since the organist sometimes has his own plans.

After the service, the priest and congregation filed out as the organist played a suitable up tempo escape or run-away kind of tune, but then came the surprise.  After the green robed priest had shaken the hand of the last congregant filing by him and decided the rest of us were not coming his way and  he, too, exited  the church- the organist kept on playing. And playing. And playing.

Five or six of us just stood there, heads turned upwards towards the giant piped monster behind which he hid, and listened.  Five minutes. Ten minutes. Almost fifteen minutes.  He swept down and up the scale, pounded out giant sonorous chords, slowed his pace for almost (not quite) pretty passages, and then revved up once more.  I could picture his elbows out and his arms jumping on and off the keyboard with an emotional vigor as if the Phantom of the Opera married Liberace.

I asked one of the men collecting the hymnals if this was a regular thing.  He said it often happens, not necessarily just on Sundays, and sometimes not on Sundays, but it is a fairly often recurring phenomenon.

Then there was yesterday- a day that presented me with a number of unexpected turns.

My plan?  To go up to Montmarte and revisit Espace Dali - my favorite little museum where in barely an hour you can wander among a  huge sampling of his scuptures and watercolors.   I assumed the museum would be back to its old normal self after having cleared out the special bande dessinee exhibit I visited and wrote about last year.

After the museum,  I was to meet my friend Raluca at the Relais de la Butte, a lovely restaurant on a terrace part way down from the butte - a little off the rue Norvins tourist laden beaten path, but still with a great view.

A simple plan.

But it was to be an afternoon of surprises.

Not all surprises are welcome.

I knew that there are a number of metro stops one can emerge from around the Butte Montmarte to get there, but Abbesses is my favorite since you arrive on a lovely little Place with a colorful merrygoround, right across the street from a church, and the walk up to Sacre Coeur isn't bad, and..........................there is always an elevator to take you up to street level ..........which is a looooong way up!

Not yesterday.

The signs that the ascenseurs were under repair appeared on the platform after I emerged from the train.  I think I lost my French for a moment and used a word beginning with "sh..." while others were just sighing or uttering an "oh la la" or such.

So it was around and around and around up the quaint and lovely but very taxing circular stairway up and up and up until I reached the street .

But then, the museum provided gifts that overcame the ascenseur issue.

I regained my breath and stretched my legs, I arrived at the Musee.  I found that  , after clearing out the bande dessinee exposition,  the Dali museum had  put back the regular sculptures and artworks as I had expected - but in locations other than where they had once been, PLUS they had added some additional ones I don't recall seeing there in recent years. And everything was configured in a clear and interesting organizational method.  The artworks were grouped  in themes, with each themed area marked by a large wall sign describing in two languages the meaning of that theme in the works of Dali and, sometimes, in the history of the world.

The section on  time and science included the sculpture that Dali had done of Sir Isaac Newton - which I don't recall seeing  in the museum last year - where the figure holds a ball at the end of a string (the apple in its gravitational pull) and there  are large holes where Newtons face and vital organs would be.

The explanation is that   Dali felt the living Newton had become to the public a "mere name in science, stripped of his personality and individuality."

I have always loved the Espace Dali, and now so much more.  The changes were a surprise.  A wonderful one.

 Then there was the unexpected historical cabaret entertainment up on Place de Tertre.

I   had wandered into the Musee Montmarte just before reaching Dali  because I knew Claudia Hommel had that stop  on her schedule for her Chicago Paris Cabaret Connexion activities this week (see http://Chicagopariscabaretconnexion.org )  and, since I had not been able to reach her by phone,  I wanted to ask her about the time when  her  Saturday night concert really started (after the talks and panels) .

I found her and her group in the museum garden.  She answered my question, but then also told me they were ending up at 3:30 at the Boheme de Tertre on Place de Tertre to give a presentation on black women singers in Paris.

I don't eat at the tourist places on Place de Tertre and I was looking forward to the Relais, but told her I would come a bit late.

After lunch, Raluca and I entered the lower "club" level of the Boheme to find a  full room listening to Claudia and an African American woman explain the successes and tribulations of Josephine Baker and Eartha Kitt etc. while at intervals, the African American woman sang the ladies' songs from the era.  Spectacular voice!

Then, Claudia brought up to the stage a woman who had been Josephine Baker's personal assistant. She told interesting an intimate stories, such as when Walter Winchell was being unkind to Josephine but Grace Kelly stepped in (she was still Grace Kelly at the time) and later when Queen of Monaco, she helped Josephine back onto her feet with a gala concert in Monaco.

At the end, a woman sitting near me stood up and told the room, in French (claudia translated) how she had been at Josephine's last concert - just before she died.  She described with emotion the see through costume on the then 77 year old woman, her voice, and the electricity felt in that audience.

The woman described how Ms Baker expressed her life choice, despite her age andv failing health, to continue to enjoy the highs even if death was to arrive.

Indeed, she died the next day of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Finally, as I left the Butte to head down to sit in on a service at St. Gervais (to hear the harmonic voices of the acolytes and the old and wonderful organ), I passed a small terrace just below the walkway along the bottom of Sacre Coeur and watched a theatrical group in costume putting on a play for the  few who stopped to watch.

It's Paris.

You never know what will happen.

If you are open to it, the day can go many different ways you have not anticipated.

I love her.

A Day in the Life of a Restaurant

La Verre A Pied is little.  And sweet. And local.  And the food is spectacular- well cooked with  small but perfectly filling portions, lovingly put together by the woman who co owns it.

At lunch it seems generally  to be packed.  I walked  down rue Mouffetard on Tuesday and arrived there just a little after 1:00 in the afternoon with my paraplui since it had been raining all morning (still was as I wrote the first part of this entry, sitting at a table in the restaurant at 5:00 ).  Only two seats were left when I arrived, and I was given a choice.  One was right up against the open door which I thought was cool since I could people watch as I ate - but it turned out to be not so much "cool" as too cold so they moved me to the back on a comfy thin cushion on a bench  next to two tourist Paris newbies from Jerusalem.

The server/owner  Hendricka, when asked, recommended the dinde - "saute de dinde a la citronnelle - riz" which was spectacular.  She was right. The sauce was aromatic, tasty, memorable - the kind that you can't help finishing and even sopping up with the remaining riz and some bread - even if  not hungry. 

Afterwards, as the restaurant emptied out, I stayed in my seat for an allonge. (a large and diluted coffee a la America).

Then the young woman who works at the counter in the afternoon showed up and since it was still pretty nasty outside, I decided to take an empty table up front.  Actually, by then all of the tables were empty.  And with my phone plugged in and my hotspot turned on my computer can get the internet, so I sat there  with a Ricard pastis - one of my favorite drinks,  and then a second Ricard -  typing away and feeling like a local and a writer.

Others walked in for a coffee or a wine, and talked to the young woman, or perused one of the local papers sitting on the bar with pamphlets about nearby theatrical performances and the like. 

The small woman with the well toned body and the well coiffed and banged  red fuzzy hair was back.  She was there Sunday  when I walked in  for lunch too late and they served  me with a plate of cheese and charcuterie anyway (very nice of them).  and the somewhat scuzzy man with the  8 oclock shadow, a belly  apparent  behind his sports type casual shirt and little earrings - he was also back.  She treats him as if he were a boyfriend with her giggling and touching and laughing too loud. I'm thinking he is not.  But they are apparently here often at the same time.

I came back yesterday for a quick bite  on my way for a get together with friend Monique at Verse Tourjours.  It is very pleasant to be in such a warm and  welcoming place and even more so as it becomes more familiar to me as a once or twice a year regular..  I could do this a couple of days a week if I lived here. I keep filling in the spaces in my picture of life as a pretend resident of Paris in general, and this little neighborhood in particular - the neighborhood that Hemingway lived and wrote in during his earliest Paris days and wrote of in "Moveable Feast."   My apartment this time is just around the corner from his apartment on rue Cardinal Lemoine and down the block from where he wrote on rue Descartes.

Yesterday I  walked in to Verre a Pied  only intending to eat an entree and a wine - but when Claude told me the kitchen was still open if I ordered quickly - and Hendrika came out to get my order, I could;t help having a second chance at the dinde.  It didn't disappoint.

I have loved this place for years but never until recently understood the ebb and flow of its daily life - from the crowds at lunch and dinner to the regulars and walk ins who turn it into a pleasant place to relax during the afternoon

My friend Lynn - who, sadly and surprisingly  passed away this year after a hitherto successful battle with cancer on and off for over 15 years - wrote a wonderful description of the restaurant  two years ago. It was published in friend Richard Nahem's "Eyepreferparis" blog.  There is no way I could top her description - so with due deference to her and the talent she showed in her writing of it and to  him for  publishing it - here is Lynn's wonderful piece from 2015: (SEE www.ipreferparis.net for Richard's wonderful daily blog featuring his insightful Paris articles, his tours, etc.)

September 29, 2015

Lunch with Lynn/Under 20 Eats- La Verre a Pied

Lynn is back in Paris and wrote today's Lunch with Lynn.

How would you like to return to the days of the French Revolution while eating lunch--hear the horses galloping by, watch a blacksmith making horseshoes?  Le Verre a Pied (The Stem Glass), a tiny, very old world café/restaurant right on the narrow cobblestoned rue Mouffetard in the Latin Quarter can offer you that. Claude and Hendrika have owned the enchanted place since 1983, the two of them working as a solitary team to bring you marvelous French dishes, different daily. They bought it in 1983 from Madame Paulette who bought it in 1947 from her father who bought it in 1919. It became a café about 1870, during the French Commune, and before that (here comes the Revolution) it was a long passageway at the end of which was a forge, where the kitchen is now (time to use your imagination).

Richard and I and a Chicago friend, Michel Kurlander,had lunch there on my birthday two weeks ago (not a pivotal birthday but one that seemed appropriately symbolized by the French Revolution).  Hendrika makes the various plats each day –but no appetizer, simple fare is simple fare --and a variety of desserts that are so French you think you are having dinner with Parisian friends on a Sunday chez eux --and you really are. I had the rabbit in mustard sauce; Richard and Michel had the lamb stew. The rabbit and the lamb were deliciously tender and the sauces so divine your tongue can never forget, leading you back to the same dish over and over again.

You get homemade desert with the formule plat/dessert, and we could choose chocolate cake, crème brulée, or fromage blanc with raspberry coulis. Which one do you think I chose?  Right!  Richard had crème brulée and Michel the fromage blanc. We waited a bit longer than usual until suddenly out of the kitchen/forge stepped Hendrika with my chocolate cake and one 
lovely discreet candle (I heard the horses gallop by!) And it was a huge piece of cake, the size of a map, French obviously.

Magnificent. I made my wish, blew out the candle in one blow (sooo talented)  and voila! 

The wish of course has come true. 

If you are wandering down rue Mouffetard, the oldest market street in Paris, do stop in at Le Verre à Piedand step back in time. Say hello to Claude and Hendrika for us. Let’s all be part of  the food revolution. “Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!”

La Verre a Pied 
118 rue Mouffetard, 75005 
Metro: Censier- Daubenton 
Open Tuesday to Saturday 9AM-9PM
Sunday 9:30AM -4PM
Tel. +33 (1) 43 31 15 72

Getting Serious

ok.  I started this blog in 2008 or 2009 but have never been particularly serious about it - witness just a few .over the years.

Yesterday, I was sharing some of my latest Paris insights with a group of Paris expat residents gathered for Adrienne Leeds' "Apres Midi" get together, and one said "you should publish a blog" and I recalled I had already tried that, but never discovered how to do it on a consistent basis, or how to cause folks to tune in.

So today - it took me 30 minutes just to find out how to get back onto the blog - I will at least write something and, if I can, I will see if I can change my bio and my picture.

Yesterday I saw Paris through the eyes of my young Israeli cousin who I had just met for the first time Friday night when we both arrived in Paris that day(for me it was a return after several days once more  wandering the F. Scott Fitzgerald and Picasso paths on the Cote d'Azur, and for her it was a first time visit  from Israel )

Talya only had a few hours yesterday morning and at first wanted to visit a "small" museum.  The Cluny would have been perfect - but it was closed. Tuesday is one of those days when a number of museums are closed.

So instead, we visited the church St Etienne du Mont (the Midnight in Paris Church).

St Etienne du Mont is not on the regular tourist track - not like Notre Dame - but it is a very special, beautiful and historic church.  I actually prefer it not to be so well known, since one of the charms of such churches as St Severin and St Etienne du Mont is the silence in which you can meditate, or look quietly at the awesome architecture and artwork and sculptures without being interrupted by crowds - and definitely without such annoyances as electric cords to facilitate loudspeakers, long lines of camera laden wide eyed folks, and gift shops.

St. Etienne du Mont is the 15th century successor to the original church built by Clovis on that Paris hill in the 6th century.  He wanted him and his queen to be buried there alongside St. Genevieve, the patron Saint of Paris.  That original church resulted in the area being referred to as "Montaigne St. Genevieve" and the current church, across from the Pantheon, is on what is now known as rue Montaine St. Genevieve. It was constructed when the original church became too small for its congregation. The bell tower (Tour Clovis) from the original structure is now on the grounds of Lycee Henri IVacross the street.

Not only does the church feature the only remaining rood screen in Paris (an imposing and filigreed white structure ranged across and above the center), and a beautiful organ, but a cloister through which you can walk and, after picking up a pamphlet, view the details of the 12 beautiful hand painted windows that are along the cloister wall - put together from the remains of the original 22 windows.

On Sunday morning, I attended a mass at the church and discovered that the organist often continues to play for 10-15 minutes beyond the end of the service, for practice, fun, or just to provide an experience to the few (which that morning included myself and only five others) who choose to  remain behind for a few minutes.  It wasn't quiet music but loud and ranging up and down the scales with an energy and speed, alternating with areas of quiet, that was exciting and fun.

Talya and I then had lunch at Café Panis - my favorite café simply because one can eat, charge a phone, and observe Notre Dame  just across what I call a sliver of the River Seine, while eating and drinking.

Finally, we visited the Memorial de la Deportation, the stark and stunning and emotionally draining memorial behind Notre Dame, commemorating the 200,000 souls sent to Nazi camps by the Vichy regime.  From behind her, I took a photo of Talya sitting quietly on the stone in the courtyard contemplating the River Seine through the bars created by the tall iron pointed stakes at that corner.  I think she was particularly moved by  the corrider just inside the building, which is seen through a window with iron bars ,  extends to an eternal light at the other end and is lined by 200,000 crystals.   I was also so moved the first time I came to this site, and still am each visit.

I also am grateful for the opportunity to  know a relative I didn't know existed,  since of the Israeli family branch, only my cousin Chickie, Talya's grandmother, had been in contact with me over the years - through a "Facebook friendship." I feel as if I have found a new, dear friend.  I am sure we will keep in touch.

THE GREAT GERTRUDE

Woke up in the middle of the night again (actually - first thing in the morning under Paris time) and wrote a bit and then started to read "Narration", the book that includes the four lectures Gertrude Stein gave in 1935 at the University ...of Chicago, during the trip that marked her first return to the States since her 1903 move to Paris. According to the back cover, these lectures cover her thoughts about the American people, literary form & modernism, the nature of history, and the "inventiveness of the English language." Knowing the nature of her writing and her life - I'm excited.

Also, this is the only Stein I didn't already own. Until I spotted it in Shakespeare and Company last week, I didn't know it existed.

Just into the introduction, I found some information that brought me to posting this status - apparently, Chicago was her favorite American City and she came back here four times! Also, she had her book signing at Marshall Fields, where it was so crowded that a Tribune reporter noted that she couldn't even get to the floor of the signing!

Know how many times I have walked by 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris where Gerturde lived with Alice b. Toklas? and now, there is the Chicago connection. Wow!!!i

I love her "Three Lives" and some day I may even be able to make sense out of "Tender Buttons", where she used words almost as a painter paints in the abstract - favoring verbs and prepositions over nouns, interested in the "melody and color" of the words as if doing a cubist painting with them (according to one description): examples: "Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke." a"Little eyelets that have hammer and a check with stripes between a lounge, in wit, in a rested development." (this last one is called "END OF SUMMER" would you believe).
Putting Tender Buttons right back on the Stein shelf. (There's a shop with that name by the way just north of the Loop. I think it actually sells buttons).
In the meantime, I'm reading her lectures. See More

 

Death, Life, Irrelevancies

This morning, in the throes of a newfound (and probably temporary) resolve to blog - even though not one damn person has ever read this bog other than me (next, I will try to somehow ascertain how to spread the word - assuming I decide i want to do that) - anyhow, throes and all - in between readying the Blue Apron ingrediants for a cheese on foccaccia dish later, putting on sweats,  making a quick assessment of what I must do today (most of  which is in the list of the things I didn't do yesterday - making lists is an endeavor that does not seem to move me one iota forward from the deep pit of lethargy and discarded good intentions) -and preparing to do a run/racewalk for maybe 30 minutes, ending at Marianos for an oatmeal, and  restocking of kale, chard, peppers, a small milk, and some olive oil - after preparing for all that.

Here I am.............writing nothing.

There are words spewing out onto the white screen as my fingers (newly painted in silver- don't ask) move with resolve and energy and speed , tap tapping on the keyboard - but words are just that unless they attach themselves to other words that in the entirety of their joining become something worthwhile, or at least interesting, or at a minimum - articulate.

Apparently, no hope of that this morning.

At least my new phone - the gifted Moto X - the one I am, after four days, still slowly getting to know (it's the same with most new relationships) - at least it now displays Chicago time.  After mucking arund with it for almost an hour yesterday when I discovered it thought I was on the east coast, and finally (I really don't recall how) , after going into every possible setting and app that could affect the time, made it understand that it was indeed Central time here...................well, I woke this morning and the window across my bedroom - the narrow sliver of window in which a wicker basket of small teddy bears sits - that window showed a grey sky perhaps an hour or two away from daylight.  The damn Moto, however - which I reflexively punched when its alarm rang (at what it told me was 7:30 am) and then rested against my bent knees to use to check e mails etc. - it  displayed a clear digital white reading on its black surface - yes, indeed, it was 8:30 in the morning.   I shone the screen onto my wristwatch as a mini flashlight - and my wristwatch told me it was 6:30 am.   That of course jibed with the sky and the world as I could see it from my under-quilt snuggly position.  So, 45 minutes later - again, after trying things too numerous to describe - all over the screen, general settings, clock settings, location settings, etc. - discovered when I checked the online 'help" menu and then went to reset "time and date" (had not even thought of that, since it is something on this damn machine that happens automatically,including initially) that it was set for central america - Bogota Columbia, to be exact.  How did that happen in the middle of the night with the fucking  thing on my nightstand?   Probably the same gremlins who periodically make my AOL software freeze so that nothing can be touched or pressed without a complaining "beep beep" that says in translation  "nah nah nah nah nah- I'm on strike". Oh - I DID try to "reboot" the Moto (that usually works with PC related shit) but no.................after three reboots and revivals, I was still in Bogota.

So it has thus far not been an auspicious beginning to what will I am sure be a shit day anyway, what with the client projects I really need to get to, the  run I probaby won't take (ok - probably will racewalk to Marianos since I'm already dressed, and do need the kale), the NAWBO article I just recalled I have to finish by today,  the dust and piles of papers collecting around me (I am way overdue in cleaning the apartment ), and the fact that now yet another week has passed, another week without the progress I promise myself will suddenly start occurring.

I am down another pound.

I have counted WW points for the last three days, and done well.

I did read the Washington Post this morning on the Moto while still in bed (at least the hard articles and commentary on the Russian situation - disturbing).

And I have written this blog entry - this lousy , meandering entry.

Which I called "Death, life, irrelevancies."  Why?

Oh, yes.  Death.  Too much of it lately.  I know it is inevitable and a constant, but dammit, I don't need to suddenly be reminded of it so vividly.  In the last 9 months - Amos, Sandra, Myrna, Catherine, and now Pat's spouse Vernita  (she was Pat's  first real relationship  after she came out, and Pat and Vernita were the first GLBT couple to marry in Illinois under the new law - with much fanfare).   The last one - Vernita's passing -  is in some ways the hardest for a number of reasons.  She was an important, vivid, exciting figure in the GLBT movement, civil rights, and other progressive causes - ever since her first awakening at Woodstock I recently discovered.. And that is the problem - my personal problem - the word "recently".  Her spouse Pat has been a friend of mine for many years, and I have met Vernita several times, though briefly, at her apartment during their annual Xmas bashes - but I have never gotten to know her.  I did ask Pat and Vernita to join me for lunch or dinner, but that was only in the last six months, after she had become so weakened that it was a hard choice to make such plans.  Now, I am getting to know her - since the announcement of her death yesterday morning - by watching You Tube videos of her speeches,  reading her biography, seeing the NBC piece about her - incuding the lovely Mary Morton description of who she -Vernita - was, and watching their wedding on You Tube.  And the result is that I want to get to know her better.  I want to sit with her over a glass of wine and talk about the history of the womens' movement, and civil rights, and politics, and this country, and black and white, and just girl talk and the talk of intelligent articulate people with similar world views.  And it is too late.  She is gone.  So many things that we delay can no longer happen.  That is the reality that the death of Vernita, and of others, and my aging body, and the bulbous face of Kim Novak on the Oscars, and the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman through a drug overdose in the prime of his talent and creativity after having kicked the habit and found a loving relationship,  and .............and...............and................all of the reminders smacking me across my face - more so lately than ever - that this life is going to end, and nothing and no one can tell you when and how - and if you (I) want to do something there may not be a "later" or "after I get this one other thing done"  or even another horizen.

That is the shit fact.  The truth.  The reality.

Most of us ward it off by forgetting it exists.  We live each day as if we have forever.

That was easier when I was twenty.  And forty.  But now, I'm approaching.................................(I almost cannot say it).........seventy!  

I cannot live even one day with the theory that..............I'll do that or get to that or write that or call him or her later.  Always later.

I already made that decision years ago, when that four year period from Hades occurred - during which my law firm and marriage broke up, my mother and father died, two of my children were injured, and I discovered and had surgery for breast cancer.

And I have run off to France when I feel like it, and written short stories, and spent a lot of time hugging grandkids.

but

A big but.

In the daily living of life, in between those life affirming and living -in-the-present actions - in the daily living, let's face it.  I'm a time waster - big time time waster.  Real Housewives and NCIS and computer games and re reading Travis McGee books etc.

For Philip Seymour Hoffman, later has stopped.  And for Vernita, and Catherine, and Sandra, and Amos and Myrna, and Paul Newman (I cried while crossing the Grant Park swale when I read that on my old smart phone a few years ago), and for I.J. and Bernice and Bobo and Herby.

The world keeps getting emptier.

They say - whoever the Hell "they" are - that you should live each day as if it were your last.  Well, that doesn't work because if it were really my last I would take every last penny in my puny - very puny - 401(k) accunt and do something with it - something that involves a foreign country and all of my kids and grandkids celebrating that last day in a glorious way.

But at least one should live each day with the knowledge that things may be over soon.  or not.

When the Hell am I ever going to write that novel?  Or those short stories? or read the rest of Proust?  Or read, thoughtfully, and with recall, all of the books i have on writing?  Or get a physical checkup?  Or become a runner again (recalling now the wind in my hair and the clarity of thought and clearness of breath and joy  I felt and had when I was running down the Lakefront in good condition) or  tighten my muscles (recalling the prideful high I had when I passed a mirror on a street and saw the then fifties firm body that was me) .????????

Ok - now I have managed to cause a deep lump in my gullet, and moisture behing my eyeballs.

I need to take that damn run or racewalk.

I'm done.  With this blog post.   I will be back for another tomorrow (I think).

JUST WENT BACK TO THIS SITE ON A REAL COMPUTER = MY PC - WHICH IS THE ONLY WAY I AM COMFORTABLE REALLY WRITING ON IT - SO NOW, AN HOUR AFTER THIS ENTRY WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED, I CAN EDIT IT: (originally psted at 6:29 am; now editing at 8:59 am)

My son in law said I should blog instead of entering my wandering thughts onto facebook. Well, there are several problems.  One is that I have no audience for his blog.  No one knows about it.  And what good is it to throw thoughts out ito the universe if no one out there listens?  Secondly it is more dificult.  Just took me five minutes to find the thing and figure out again how to post entries.  It is now on my android's home screen, yet typing on the god damn android keyboard (loosely called such since it is only an interactive picture of a keyboard without keys) is challenging and annoying and I hate it.  For today, I have just paired the separate "real" keyboard that I use with my I Pad to the android using its Bluetooth.  But that is not practical since it is large and not generally in my pocket or on my nightstand with the android.  So for now, Chris, here is an entry but no promises for the future.  And you will admit, I am sure, in your own  articulate but curmudgeonly way, that this entry is shit.  Right?

Starting Again

This is an experiment to see, now that I have a mini I pad, whether typing on its screen will be a means to facilitate writing again, and more regularly, in my long ago created blog.

I've returned from nine days in France; I've managed to reduce from 154 pounds to a range of 134 to 136; and didn't gain a single pound back while in France - though this week back (rationalization- " its my Birthday Week") has thus far been pretty bad, what with pasta at both Giordano's, the Fabio restaurant (Sienna Tavern) and Trattoria No 10;, then quiche, much chill and smooth white wine at Cyranos with Di V, Emily, Michele Katz, and Toni King ( along with bread, escargot, a potato leek soup, and chocolate mousse), plus TWO iced chai lattes- and the only exercise? I walked to and from .Cyranos- grand total of two miles.

So, until my birthday brunch to be served by Kathy Sunday morning, and birthday dinner to be shared with Brett and Bobby after Goodman's Jungle Book on Sunday afternoon, I will be back to goodness, and next week I will start going to that yoga on thr beach thing regularly, and running/ walking)

And I still intend to lose another 20 pounds and become tight and fit by year end.