Winter Walkabout, Place Massena to the old Town

Local police brigade, Place Massena.  a couple of Monday's ago.

Fountain, Place Massena

Opera House

Chocolate Creche

Monday Flea Market

Treasures or ...

Old useless "toot"? 

Bottom of Cours Saleya

Local folk dance demonstration

Emily Patrick : exquisite little scenes

http://www.emilypatrick.com/




What you may not know is that I don't have to surf the net because I have contributors. ... smart, savvy spies with insatiable curiosity, humor, and discernment in subjects whose interest I share. These everyday journalists send me tidbits they have found in cyberspace and I can pass them on to you.

 One of these is my friend Bruce B. from NYC who lives here now.   Bruce along with his savvy and talented wife, Roxanne,  used to be the owners of Cafe Loup,  a popular restaurant in the west village.

  Cafe Loup  still has a "bonne table"even after our friends left it in the hands of new owners.  It is still a treat to eat there and bask in a unique atmosphere.  http://www.cafeloupnyc.com/

Bruce and Roxanne have always collected art and have "a very good eye".  If you were to go into Cafe Loup now, as I do each time I am in NYC, you will see pieces of their former collection still in place.

It is Bruce who have sent me this link to the site of Emily Patrick.  I have had it for over a week now and I cannot get enough of looking at her paintings.

  These "tableaux" are technically brilliant in composition and color work and in the use of tempera and oil to offer the ultimate in luminosity,  but beyond that they have inexpressible charm , intimacy and truth.

 The work skates on the edge of the sentimental but never really dips too deeply into that pot as the scenes are more about the roots than the blossoms....if you read me.  Still they are images that are universally peaceful and calming to the eye.

 As much as I love abstract expressionism,  if I could paint like this, I would.

THE DIGITAL STORY OF NATIVITY - ( or Christmas 2.0 )

I had a memorable Christmas.  My little party of three was a success!   I got phone calls and messages from England and America and French friends too.   I got photos of growing kids and dogs.

 I stayed up late and savored all.

 Ahhh.  I am just going to do nothing today.  I may even get dressed........ later.    The hell with the gym.

Sandrine Piau Nuit d'étoiles Debussy

One of my French readers has sent me this musical offering to console me after I mentioned missing Christmas music.    It is called Night of the Stars by Debussy , sung by Sandrine Piau.  Isn't it piercingly beautiful?

We are the World....

I went out again today and do not see a lot of merriment for Christmas.  There are a lot of horns honking out of impatience, not the expected number of shoppers in the stores.  There is more like a grim determination to get through the holidays and wait for the sales on Jan 9th.

The woman next to me on the bus was quoting to me exactly how much the French are paying out to immigrants as she saw a young black mother board the bus with her handicapped child in a wheel chair.  Many of the  French are angry and disillusioned as are so many across the globe.... and in England, and America....  People who are losing all they have worked for.

  I will be surprised if the National Front  does not gain many votes in France in the next election.   I live in a working class city.  I sense and hear the disillusionment first hand from friends and people on the street.

My friend Bruce has just sent me this video.  It has all of my favorite voices as it was done "in the day": Ray Charles, Diana Ross, Bobby Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson,  Harry Belafonte, Bette Midler and more.   His question is whether this anthem of hope will hold?

Will we be able to come together and help each other now,   25 years on since this video was made?  Are we going to be able to face into these winds of despair and frustration?

   This video was a tonic for me so I share it with you.    Notice the energy the singers are getting from each other.  Hear how joyfully they sing as a group.  Watch how proud they are of their brief contribution to the whole.

 We are the World, We Are the People.  I am afraid it is down to us.  It always was.

Let me paraphrase Rumi in one of his poems:

"Go up on the roof at night in the city of your soul
and sing your note.  Sing it loud!"

Bless your Christmas.  Bless you every one.

Amaryllis: "Blythe and gay"

I am having mixed feelings about Christmas.  I am alone in the house now and there is only the sound of rain.

  I have a few decorations in place and I have been humming Carols like a lunatic.  I think it is a kind of tic that I hum them all day long.  

 I come from  a family of singers, you see.  I do miss it if I don't participate or at least hear a concert at Christmas. My family could sing "Silent Night " in 4-part harmony.  That was part of our Christmas ritual when I was growing up so I would love to sing with someone.  But there is no one for singing.

 I just had a dear friend to stay for more than a week with all the joys and frustrations of that.   She was ill because of the trunk I left in the guest room which presumably still has mildew spores in it.  We took it out but too late for sinusitis not to develop for her. 

 Despite that, we had some good times.  We drank a glass of champagne at a wonderful old hotel in town that has a map of the world on the wall and we talked rot about dreams of traveling to exotic places.   We ate a fine meal in the sunshine and walked about all of Monday. We laughed a lot and loud. She fed me chocolates from our best shop!

 Then there came the rain and the devil of getting out of Nice to London with all the requisite phone calls to travel companies that don't answer, web sites that don't respond....  All the frantic calls from people who have been expecting her there in London for Christmas.

Aiuto!. I have just  had another avalanche of big rocks hitting behind the house . The sound is frightful.... the hill is falling by degrees!   I peek out the bathroom window:  The rocks are the size, this time, of breadboxes....whatever those are.    The rain has been falling steadily for a few days now and promises to continue until boxing day.  I cringe of hearing that sound again.

 My husband, stuck in London by the mess at Heathrow will be having a dinner celebration with friends on the 25th. I am happy that that is something for him to look forward to.  It is bitter cold there, he reports.  "No thanks". It is mild here.

  I will be hosting two girlfriends for Christmas.  I am not sure how they will get on... two different cultures. There will be us three.  I think it will be fine.  We will have a festive picnic.

  I have just listened to my little brother on NPR with Terry Gross reporting about the disaster of the US exporting its toxic wastes into third world countries... always a cheerful subject.  He is such a soldier for his cause though, that I am fiercely proud and relieved that there are people like him with a passion and drive to make the world a better place.  Still I am stuck feeling sad and not a little guilty of my  own inaction.

....but I have a home and a garden and Amaryllis in a vase, and the orange tree is giving its ripe fruit now and makes outstanding juice.    I will not say no to a generous splash of vodka with that.   Here's to Christmas.  Here's to you. Here's to a better world. 

Yes, Virginia, there is a Père Noel

Nice, France: Dec. 2010

Nice, France: Dec. 2010

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

The New York Sun – 1897

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

Dear Editor

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

- Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.