Americans in Paris

We just spent five days in Paris, walking 32 miles, visiting four museums and Monet’s home. We saw thousands of people. We ate in non-Michelin rated restaurants and walked the streets of various Parisian districts. This extensive survey is not scientific or peer reviewed, but here are my impressions:

Gays are among us, a few flamboyant, but mostly blending. By and large, coupling is race-based, black women with black men, whites with whites, Syrians with Syrians, etc. It is also age-based, young with young, middle with middle, and as with me and my wife, old with old. Among younger people there is little variety, as young girls tend to hang with their own race and status. Same with guys. Where I see diversity is among young school children being led by adults, quite a cacophony of races.

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Fat chicks

The Louvre Museum holds something like 380,000 pieces of art, with 35,000 on display. Over 15,000 people visit it every day. It is overwhelming.

Yesterday was my second visit to the place, and I was determined it would be better than the first. We had a list of maybe twenty works we wanted to see, including the stele of the Code of Hammurabi. But the place is only generally organized, and lacking expertise we were quickly lost. It is maybe a few football fields long (guessing),two wings and two floors per wing with many side rooms and a basement. There is no centralized location to look up various works, no computerized guides. In a constant roar of people, fatigue quickly sets in. After maybe 90 minutes, I thought Hammurabi was not a big deal, not worth the trouble.

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A night of Vivaldi

If you are not a classical music buff, don’t be concerned. Neither am I. I only know a little of  Beethoven, a dab of Mozart (I do not care for most of his work, Vivaldi and a few others. There is so much to take in. We took time the other night to go to Sainte Chappelle Cathedral here in Paris to hear Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

If you, like me, imagine that this Vivaldi package is the brief pieces we hear now and then as backdrop to advertising or at high school concerts, not so. The seasons are quite involved and go off in many directions. By the time Winter, a brief and beautiful piece, rolls around, we have experienced almost an hour. I will give due credit to the amazing magicians later when I have more time  [Paul Rouger was far and away the star of the show, a brilliant violinist.]

We were treated at the beginning to Pachelbel’s Canon in D and then Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor. Each of these beautiful pieces is recognizable even to the untrained ear … you know, like mine.

At the end there was palpable excitement among the hundreds of people in the crowd, as there usually is at the end of a remarkable performance. I could not help but marvel at the depth of talent in our species, and the power of collaboration. I cannot imagine that we live and develop these remarkable talents, and then just die. There has to be more!  Has to be.

Of course, many do not develop our potential, and so become truck drivers, cooks, politicians and accountants. We had a piano in our house when I was a kid. None of the four of us boys ever learned to play.

Lysenko, Mann, Gore … peas in a pod

Trofim Lysenko 1898-1976) was a Russian scientist. Don’t be confused. Wikipedia calls him a “pseudo” scientist but in our day and age most science is pseudo, and yet we call our virologists, climatologists, geologists, physicists, and oncologists “scientists” nonetheless. So, I think it OK to refer to Trofim as a scientist as well.

Lysenko as responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of Russian and Chinese peasants. He came up with new agricultural practices that were to revolutionize food production in both countries,  but instead set farming back decades.

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Your “crazy driver” is my premeditated risk

By: D. S. Klausler

I love to drive. Backing up a bit, my pal Mark over at PieceOfMindfulprompted this diatribe a while back. I’ll get to the specifics, but meanwhile know that driving in Chicagoland can be mentally challenging and is frequently infuriating. Traveling out on the big road has had its events, but the city mayhem is the driving (hah!) theme herein. In typical fashion, I’ll stay modest and brief. No, I am not in a hurry on the road, but…

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How to avoid jet lag …

I have long wondered how executives and politicians manage to travel great distances and yet always seem fresh on arrival. Their time tables have to be screwed up. Yet they manage to sit through meetings and do some public speaking as if they were fresh.

I cannot do that. I need at least two days on arrival (in this case France) from Denver, an eight hour time difference. We do our best to stay awake as long as possible once we get here. Last night that was until 7:30 PM, and when I awoke at 11:30 PM I took a couple of sleeping pills that got me through until now, almost 3 AM Geneva time. I feel rested and refreshed, but there is along day ahead and another night of fighting to stay awake into a normal schedule. It usually takes those two days to work my  way into the new time zone. Continue reading “How to avoid jet lag …” →

Our little journey

In the past, as my wife and I traveled, I made it a point not to make the blog a travelogue. I just let it rest, hoping other writers would chime in. I know I wrote now and then while in foreign places, most prominently in my mind in Buenos Aires, where I tripped on the crypt of Evita, or Eva Peron, said to have died young in 1952. Her crypt said she died at age 32, but actual birth records recorded her death at age 33  and voila!, I had uncovered another fake death.

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RFK Jr.: Potential fake assassination?

I was not sure for myself that the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 was fake until I studied the autopsy photos that were released in 1981 by David Lifton in his book Best Evidence. The premise behind the book was that the powerful Kennedy family could not stop release of the photos, even as they were in extreme bad taste. If you follow my link to my post, and if you look at those photos long enough, you will see JFK’s face superimposed on another body. It sometimes takes a while, but give it the time needed. The photo darkroom work is extremely good, as it had to be, but it is not perfect.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would have been nine years old in November of 1963. Would he have been considered too young at that age to be let in on the secret? I do not know – but I would think they would want to spare him grief.

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Amazing photos of Kazakh hunters

This article, Kazakh Hunters and their Golden Eagles, has within it maybe a couple dozen amazing photographs taken by photographer Batzaya Choijiljav. They are simply stunning in their conception and execution.

Choijiljav used a five-pixel Canon Powershot A95, for photo buffs. I think it very likely that they are all copyrighted, and I do not want to violate his property rights, so I urge you take a journey over there to see these amazing people, their horses and birds.

Wikipedia and the art of lying

As a child growing up, I often did stupid things and looked for ways out of my messes. I contrived exotic lies, even thought about injuring myself to gain sympathy. I never did the self-abuse angle, but more importantly, I was never a good liar. As an adult, I learned that truth is always the best thing, as lying leads to more lying and even bigger messes.

Wikipedia lies about just about everything, but is considered a trusted source. I often consult it, as there are many matters where there is no point in lying, as with Taylor Swift’s birthday (12/13/89) or the dates of Woodstock (August 15-18, 1969). But note that there is far more to Taylor Swift, whom I suspect was trained her whole life to be famous and does not (or know how to) write her own music, or with Woodstock, an event organized to inculcate a whole generation in the culture of rock music and drugs, painting opposition to the Vietnam War as drug-addled hippies. Wikipedia can only tell us so much, and then either goes silent, or lies.

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