With current restrictions in Paris on how and why we can leave our apartment, we’ve had to make adjustments in shopping routines, exercise routines, and certainly social routines. For instance, a couple times each week, my wife and I watch a movie together, sort of a date night for people in lockdown. Rather than choosing […]
Need help with sleep – read Balzac
Both in France and in the United States, we seem to be in the worst of the COVID-19 problem now. There are shortages of equipment, rising numbers of deaths and infected, new outbreaks, and no quick fix on the horizon. We continue to be inundated with non-stop news, most of it bad. I’ve discovered that […]
Love in the Time of Coronavirus
Much of the news each day is devoted to describing problems with a new coronavirus, COVID-19, which has been spreading over the world since the beginning of 2020. Typically people try to ignore it, hoping it will go away. Then suddenly it sweeps through in a terrifying manner, and there is panic. Governments are left […]
A Tale of Two Cities – Part 1
I’m reading Charles Dickens’s novel, “A Tale of Two Cities,” in French. It is a story of London and Paris before and after the French Revolution. I’m only part way through, and not sure I understand everything that is happening. Here is what I know so far. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to pick up the […]
Bonne année 2020!
2019 was our seventh year in France, the last year of the decade, our 30th wedding anniversary, each of our 50th high school reunions, the 50th anniversary of my swearing in at the Naval Academy, the 30th anniversary of my taking command of USS Buffalo (SSN-715), the 50th anniversary of Woodstock and the moon landing, […]
A Song of Egypt
Every morning at our hotel by the Red Sea the guy making eggs would hum a little song. It was a happy song, though I had never heard the tune. It was always the same. He was always happy, cooking eggs, humming a song of Egypt. I would never have chosen to travel to Egypt […]