Sunny Days in Paris, August 2005

Paris was a revelation for us during our trip to Europe in 2005.

Well, in a very serious and honest way, Paris should be a revelation to visitors at any time---it is one of the World's Great Places.

But for us, in 2005, at the height of el Busho's reign, Paris was one of our last stops before returning home from two months abroad, and every traveler that we'd met that had already been to Paris went to great lengths to share their stories.

Those stories painted Paris as a terror-zone: everybody was either rude or worse, and to not trust the locals, for their disdain for Dubya and Americans was well established.

When we arrived, our experience was so opposite to that description that we couldn't understand what all those travelers were doing to end up being treated like that. A hostel owner who spoke no English gave us metro passes because we were out of cash. Once leaving our metro in our hotel's neighborhood, locals stopped to help us navigate the streets. The restaurant we ate at that fist night gave us free drinks and free dessert. That was all the first day, after we were pretty sure we'd be sleeping in a park that first night.

We spent the four days we had in Paris seeing "The Sights."

We made our way one of those days to Ile de la Cite, after visiting a cafe for longer that we had planned, and did our tourist gig at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Not a bad pic, but surely I took it

It was sunny out, and busy with August tourism, and we explored the grounds as best tourists can.

Blurry pics and big doors

To know that the views from some of these pictures no longer exist because of the fire on Monday is a surreal thought exercise.

Having survived a fire, the flames affect me in strange ways, and to see flames consuming the interior of an 850 year old architectural ventricle of one of the world's greatest cities, a space in my heart gets consumed by flames.

My camera at this time was a first or second generation digital apparatus, a freebie that came with a desktop computer. The indoor shots in low-light levels leave plenty to be desired, as can be seen here.

The Rose Window is mostly unknowable from this picture, but we were there and put eyes on it. I'm not sure if it remains.

A while back on this website I had a photo contest, where the winner got the following picture framed (both Dan and Norm won pictures):

It wasn't until this past Monday that I realized the sculpture was from Notre Dame.

One picture Corrie took we have framed and up in our house, a classic view from the "backside," one of the great photos in our possession, one that I will argue to keep up forever:

I'm still processing the fire and the destruction of much of the interior, but I'm not French, nor do I live in Paris, so my connection is vastly different from residences and the French in general.

Happy Birthday Tony!

I've missed some birthdays here recently, but really, I've missed lots of things on here recently.

But I'm going to try and focus on the three or four folks I feel compelled to mention on their birthdays this year, as this is a big one for us.

Tony, when I get to a different computer, I'll find some good pictures. Happy Birthday brother!

Touch a Truck in Long Beach

As part of a LONG weekend, we walked down the beach path (for an hour directly into the sun) to an event at a big parking lot. Inside the lot was a wide ranging collection of trucks and truck-like vehicles.

The draw was for families to bring their children (overwhelmingly toddler aged) to climb in and on and around the trucks, a Touch a Truck event held annually for a few years now.

Cass loves trucks, and the event was free with a donation of non-perishable food-stuffs for an AIDS shelter. The trip was a no-brainer.

They announced while we were there that the estimate on visitors would be eclipsing 10,000.

In a sun-blasted parking lot.

As it worked, two parents, or two adults, were mostly a necessity. One of us would wait in line as the other would run around with the Boy as he checked tires and tried to cut the line for other trucks, only to be corralled and brought to the spot where the other had been waiting, and hopefully quickly getting inside some humongous man-made contraption.

This was the first truck, an older dude's personal vehicle, and there was no line.

Check out how freaking big this thing is:

One of the crane trucks had a helmet, which lead to an adorable picture:

One older married couple brought a super modded Porsche. It had fiberglass outrigging that turned it into a boat:

The nice couple took pictures of families with their phones, which was helpful.

I'm saving this next picture in my imagination for when Cass is old enough to actually drive along a beach, or, more accurately, drive me along a beach:

Weird Design Similarities

I wasn't sure how to post this, but, here we go.

Cass has been doing a great job destroying most everything, and one thing recently was the dust jacket to my copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

As I was heading to the garbage to show him where things end up that he tears into pieces, I noticed that the look of the Styrofoam container that held the remnants of the pizza from the previous evening's dinner out was eerily familiar:

This picture is of lower quality that I realized, but...

...so what?

Is this where we are? Showcasing pieces of garbage?

St. Paddy's Day Random Thoughts

Last year during the Cinco de Mayo time in early May I remember hearing lots of angry discussion from folks with Mexican heritage about cultural misappropriation.

I searched for similar bouts of anger from the Irish set over the drunken shenanigans associated with St. Paddy's.

I found an essay written by an Irishman about how, to paraphrase, We Americans tend to look backwards and revere where we're from, while in contemporary Ireland they pretty much focus on the future, and the current. He mentioned that if, maybe, you were born in Mumbai and emigrated to Ireland when you were five years old and no, at thirty, you speak with an Irish accent, you would be considered Irish.

He even added that, pretty much, if you live anywhere and speak with an Irish accent naturally, you'd be considered Irish.

That gave me some perspective on the Irish self-identity.

And then I heard interviews with the writer of the new book Say Nothing, Pat Keefe. He mentioned that one of the linchpins of the as yet lasting peace between the loyalists and the IRA was that only a focus on the future, and not the past and its atrocities committed on both sides during the Troubles, has lead to a moden society that has never dealt with the past in any meaningful way.

It makes sense that an Irish essayist would espouse the mantra of looking forward rather than backwards when it comes to self-identity.

Of course, its refreshing to focus on the future, on the Forward, but we can't deliberately forget whatever heritage we cling to.

It's one of our fundamental characteristics.

Happy St. Patrick's 2019

I missed Pi Day posting earlier this week. Bummer. Here are me and Corrie sporting our shirts gifted to us by my mom:

Cass tried wearing his Pi Day shirt all week, except for the day itself, 3/14.

Oh well.

Things have been busy, as usual, and today finds us having gone to the beach already and have since started the salted been dinner (coming up to boil right now). March 17th gives me a reason to wear my bowler all day.

A coworker/buddy of mine had his 40th birthday party last weekend, and he rented a double-decker red party bus and told everyone to wear flannel and dress like a grunge-fan from the 90s.

It was nice to not have to make any decisions and be on the peripheral of someone else's party.

Here's a group shot of us:

And here's the beach earlier today, so bright and warm and blue:

So far in the Southland in 2019, the weather has been wetter than all of 2018 and colder than any time in recorded LA history, and that's not hyperbole: February 2019 has been the first calendar month since they began keeping records in the 1860s in LA that a month did not hit 70 degrees.

LA folks hear that and go WTF? while everyone else hears that and shouts EFF YOU!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

"Awwwww, it's 9 am and I'm not drunk yet!"
----Homer Simpson

WILT: Neighborhood Cross Street's Namesake

One of my favorite apps is called Daily Art. If you like art even a little, and if you like the stories behind the art, then the free Daily Art is all you. Each day a new painting or sculpture is delivered with a snippet about its context. It's pretty rad.

A few days ago the offer was the following painting, "Winter Scene of Brooklyn" by Francis Guy:

The story talked about how the studio that Guy painted in looked out on this intersection, where Fulton, Front and a third street come together. In today's Brooklyn, the intersection exists, but the buttresses for the Brooklyn bridge are closeby.

We used to live very close to Fulton, but not this exact iteration, as this section is known as Old Fulton today.

In the lower left corner there's a couple with a kid, and directly above the kid is a gentleman walking to the left, carrying a parcel of some kind.

The parcel is a leg of lamb, and the man was the butcher. The butcher was actually named in the app's anecdote, as the interesting part of the painting's history is that many people from the neighborhood were placed in the painting by Guy. The butcher's name: Jacob Patchen.

WHAT?!?!? I said to myself when I read that.

The following picture is one I took from the top of our building in Bed Stuy, and it has probably graced this website before. The trailer we packed our belongings in and drove from California is seen at the bottom in the center:

The street we lived on was Halsey, and the near cross street at the corner was Patchen.

We lived on Halsey between Patchen and Malcolm X, but much closer to Patchen. And while I've of course heard of Malcolm X, this app's story was the first time I ever heard any reference to Patchen's namesake.