The Ile de Re is a small island off of the city of La Rochelle southeast of Paris. It is 14 miles long and only 4 miles wide. It is nearly flat. Our hotel is in St Martin, the island’s capital, and is a fishing port with white washed houses and a protected harbor. Fifteen minutes away is La Flotte which is regarded as one of the most beautiful villages in France. It, too, is a small port and fishing…
I forgot to mention in my last posting that at the seminar of lawyers we attended, someone brought up the gold ring scam (See previous posting where I explained how it worked) Out of the group of these bright trial lawyers two of them were willing to admit they had fallen for it. One lucked out paying only 5 Euros, but other paid twenty Euros for a worthless piece of junk jewelry. How many others who were too ashamed to admit they…
This is our great train experience and what we learned as first time train traveler’s in France and which is well understood by every school child I’m sure, but for us a challenge. This only applies to the main train depot in Paris which is our sole experience in train travel. We had our tickets purchased before we left the U.S. for the TGV train from Paris to La Rochelle. When we got to the station our driver showed us the…
On Sunday we visited the Musee Jacquemart-Andre. It was the villa of Edpoard Andre and his wife Nelie Jacxquemart. They were avid art collectors in the new Paris of the 19th century. Their mansion is now a museum and the only one in Paris open seven days a week. It is preserved to show what a mansion of a wealthy family of that time would look like. The art work includes Rembrandt and Botticelli. It was impressive to see. Most…
A lot has been written and published about the 1945 disappearance of five aircraft in what is known as the Bermuda Triangle. Five Avengers with fourteen airman flew off on a mission and were never seen again. This flight was designated as flight nineteen. Lots of speculation has been made about the mysterious jinx of the Bermuda Triangle and the disappearance of flight nineteen, but the actual explanation is very probably pilot error. Bermuda Attractions has a well written summary…
W are in Paris. We flew from Seattle on Thursday mid day and nine hours later we landed in Paris at 9:00 am Friday. We arrived on an overcast day. The drive to the hotel, which should have been no more then forty five minutes long took us almost two hours due to rush hour stop and go congestion. When we finally arrived the room wasn't ready so we walked around and then had coffee. After that we had a very…
Dennis Hevesi has written an obituary for Manfred Gans http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/world/europe/19gans.html that reads like a wonderful short story that could be made into a movie. Gans was a child, living with his parents in Borken, Germany. He had been born there April 27, 1922. His father was a well to do merchant in town and the first Jew to serve on the city council. As life for Jews became more and more difficult under Hitler his parents sent him to England when he…
Edward Gonalez, a emeritus professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times about the position of the Democrats today. He says that the administration and the Congressional Democrats are in deep trouble because they did not concentrate on the economy and loss of jobs, but rather spent a year fighting over a health care plan that only served to further divide politically. He believes it was…
I was born in 1935. Jack Borden graduated from law school at the University of Texas a year after I was born. Both of us are still practicing law, except I am seventy five and Jack is one hundred and one. He goes to his office in Weatherford, Texas five days a week. He is the oldest practicing member of the Texas Bar. "If I were to go home and sit down, I wouldn’t live another year. I come down…
I was listening to a National Public Radio’s broadcast about President Obama’s new oval office rug http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129609461and was interested to learn about Theodore Parker who was a minister of the Unitarian church (1810-1860). It turns out that Martin Luther King frequently used things Parker had said or written and that one of the quotes in the rug was attributed to King, but had originally been said by Parker. Jamie Stehm wrote an article in the Washington Post Oval Office rug gets…
