Odes to the boys

Holidays are always hard times for me ever since I lost my three boys almost two decades ago as tender young children to PAS during my multi-year quarter-million dollar divorce (only the best for my ex-wife Sharon). I think about them practically every day and miss them especially during the end of the year, just before their birthday season starts, when all three have birthdays within the next 60 days.  I hope all three are well and happy, although if any of them weren't well or suffered some tragedy, their mother would never inform me.  Sharon had plenty of help in her successful extra-judicial patricide through Parental Alienation Syndrome, which some refer to as child abuse, which she foisted upon these three tender lads, all impressionable adolescents, abetted in the deed by her coterie of family wrecking "professionals" like Meg, Joe, Victor, Bill, Van Sicko, Meg's putative lover, and the rest of her mercenary adults whose profession is murdering the childhoods of children.

 I remember my oldest boy Jimmy whenever I hear this song that came out around the time he was born.  Jimmy had such promise, and tragically his mother, and Meg as the enabler, in my opinion put stoking her covert narcissism above his well-being as a child during the years-long divorce wars.  I miss and love you, Jimmy, no matter what easy-money scheme you're currently engaged in.

This is the pop song that played incessantly during the time my middle son was born.  I love you, Johnny, wherever you are and whatever you're doing.

This song always brings back bittersweet memories of my youngest child Danny.  He was the most vulnerable child, being the youngest and the one most in need of special care, and he was therefore the victim of all the hidden-memories-recalled schemes of the charlatan Victor and the rest of the mental health "professionals" that his mother surreptitiously took him off to during the divorce wars, known and unknown to me, to the point where he expressed troublesome ideation, a child's cry for help, that the adults in the form of the GAL finally took note of and forced Sharon to tell me about.  I am sorry I was unable to protect you, Danny, as these adults ravaged you as a child and I love you and hope you are well.

Have a healthy and Happy New Year, JJ&D and families.

Book List 2019

I read thirteen books this year.  Many were about the run-up to World War I, because I believe as the world currently re-arms and separates into warring camps, history is repeating itself a century later.  I read several World War II histories, all battle histories, because I went to Normandy this year to visit the five D-Day beaches, perhaps the greatest military enterprise that was successfully (albeit with a frightenly slender margin for success) in world history.  It literally changed world history.  I believe that the short era of peace between the two world wars was merely an interregnum in a greater clash between governmental models, authoritative or liberal, and really, World War II was merely a continuation and the conclusion to World War I; and perhaps later history, if mankind survives this century, will treat the two great wars as one continuing worldwide war, sort of like the Hundred Years  or the Thirty Years War.

Other than bellicose books pointing us towards our perhaps immediate future, I read a novel (literature), a play, and a antebellum civil war book--all had a political bent that point towards American peculiarities that have forged us as a world power, racism (slavery) and the power of propaganda and misspeak.  Plus a couple of other books of interest to me.

Here are the top ten books I read this year in my estimation, in the order of how much they caused me to contemplate, deeply or otherwise.  Several were scintillating to me (page turners) and others were a slog to get through.

1.  The Fires of Jubilee--Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion by Stephen Oates (1975). Terrorist or Freedom Fighter?

2.  Castles of Steel--Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert Massie (2003). This I considered to be a scintillating book (832 pages), especially the you-are-there lerngthy description of the Battle of Jutland, describing naval gunfire practically salvo by salvo.

3.  Animal Farm by George Orwell (1946). Who could ever forget the image of stalwart, loyal Boxer being sent off to the glue factory by Napoleon when his usefulness was over as the other "free" animals watched helplessly in despair?

4.  Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (1955). The Scopes Trial in play-form (see: American racism).

5.  Dreadnought--Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War by Robert Massie (1991).  The steady drumbeat to a great war--especially chronicling the incompetent egotistical boob that was the Kaiser; the quoted foreign embassy dispatches often describe what a ridiculous strutting cock he was, shallow and a complete hindrance to old-style statesmanship and steady progress towards peaceful solutions--remind you of anyone constantly in the headlines currently?

6.  Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (2010). The Louis Zamperini story of perseverance, survival and redemption, a true story set amidst the destruction and cruelty of World War II.

7.  D-Day, the Battle for Normandy by Anthony Beever (2009).  Apparently there are a few inaccuracies in this book but it provides an overview of the Allied assault upon Hitler's Fortress Europa and the 3-month slugging match between the Wehrmact and the Americans, British and Canadian forces before breakout in the Coentin Peninsula that followed the lodgment effected on June 6, 1944.

8.  The Wehrmact's Last Stand--The German Campaigns of 1944-1945 by Robert M. Citino (2017).  Like the Lost Cause, tough men fanatically defending a reprehensible regime.

9.  Power at Sea--The Age of Navalism, 1890-1918 by Like A. Rose (2008). Two empires decline (France and Britain), several empires are vanquished (Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the German Empire for two decades), an empire is spawned (Japan), and an empire emerges (America).

10.  The First World War by Hew Strachan (2003, 2013).  World War I is an introduction to World War II and a presage to current times.

Lists

Yeah, I write lists.  I started my list of Books Read when I was a senior in high school and now I'm somewhere between 1500 and 2000 books read since then.

Actually, when I mention this (not very often) to folks, many seem amazed.  Perhaps they don't read many or any books and would be embarrassed, or perhaps it never occurred to them that this records their scholastic, mental and intellectual ebbs and flows during their lives.  I mean, if you read Uncle Tom's Cabin in college for a course, it would remind you of the inclinations and persuasions of that professor, wouldn't it; and if you read Nietzsche for pleasure, that would indicate your mental or perceived intellectual state at that period in your life, because nobody would read Thus Spoke Zarathustra for pleasure, right, or don't you know even who wrote that?

Book Read number 1000 decades ago was Moby Dick I remember, a great American novel (a top five), although it stalled adding to my reading list for four months while I plowed through it (while working and raising children long before my family was utterly destroyed by American divorce wars . . . well, that's another Western civilization story), because that was a momentous number and I wanted it to be a momentous book.  I'll die soon enough and take my book list to St. Peter's gate, where it'll be my ticket of admittance showing a life well lived, or maybe it'll show a life squandered.

Mostly I read history, especially of WW2 because my dad fought in that war and he was the greatest man I ever knew, but I try to read literature at least once each year.  This year it was Animal Farm because some animals are more equal than others, like, you know, Republicans.  I read at least a book a month and my next post, I'll let you know what the best dozen books were and what I thought about them.

The Best of Times, The worst of Times

What was the best of 2019?  The worst of 2019?

The best thing was seeing the freshmen Democratic Congressional Representatives show up in January, and take over control of the House from the corrupt, do-nothing, Russian-loving Republicans.  I feel proud that I worked all fall last year canvassing for Democrat candidate Jennifer Wexton in the Virginia Tenth Congressional District against Republican incumbent Congresswoman Barbara Comstock (Barbara Trumpstock, as she was known in her district) and hers was the first district in the entire country on election night to flip blue.

The worst thing was the impeachment of the president, not because he didn't deserve it, because he did, but that it showed what a drastic, ignorant mistake 63 million Americans made in 2016 in taking a fanciful flyer on a fraud artist and voting him in despite 66 million Americans voting for Clinton, and he has diminished America's greatness faster and faster ever since his cruddy, dystopian American Carnage inauguration speech.  The best thing will be when Trump is removed from office next year, either by the Senate after a trial or by patriotic Americans after November's election.

The best thing for me this year was, after undergoing the last of four eye surgeries in the spring, my return to running in May after a two year health-related layoff.  I maintained the three-runs per week schedule despite ups and downs during the intervening eight months of niggling injuries, difficulty getting started (I couldn't finish a half-mile run the first week) and lack of time during car trips (I made up the scheduled runs by doubling up the next week), and I even ran a bonafide 5k race in October (32:39) and dropped my informal time in my neighborhood mile from 10:13 in August to 9: 26 this month.

The worst thing for me this year were two potentially serious household accidents I suffered that fortunately had no long term effects (the superficial wounds soon adequately healed), that unfortunately were the result of diminishing strength or balance from my progression through my sixties.  I countered this through increased caution or care, attending a Ti-Chi class offered at the community center (so it's affordable for us retired folk) by a long-time practice master (he teaches at spook HQ also).

The best thing this year were all the friends or relatives I caught up with in some fashion like Liz, Steve, Jimmy, Lew, Rhea, Eric, one or more siblings, Mike, Mike, Mike, Courtney, Lisa, Evan, Devin, Greg, Helen, Addie, Saty, Steve and others.  It takes continuing effort, because it's so easy to let associations slip away, perhaps forever.

The worst thing was the continuing absence of certain people in my life like, of course, my three sons (I hope at the very outset that they are all alive and well--think of this--I absolutely know that if anything terrible happened to any one of them, their mother would not tell me about it, ever), at least a sibling and perhaps other relatives--a sign of the terrible times we live in, thank you Mr. President and your party and rabid unthinking base--and at least one formerly good friend who has drifted away or outright excluded me, despite my best efforts, perhaps, unfairly, because of what I am (an older white male)., not who I am.

The best thing personally this year was my visit to England and France, London and Paris, Oxford and Normandy, in the spring.  I had never been outside of North America before, and seeing the five D-Day beaches, the Bayeux tapestry, Notre Dame, Versailles and Giverny in France and Oxford, St. Paul's Church, the (replica) Globe Theatre, a Shakespeare play there (Richard II) and Trafalgar Square in England was special.

The worst thing personally this year was getting ripped off by Motel 6 and Booking.Com during my car trip through five southern states in July when I went to a baseball game in Atlanta by Motel 6 Stadium Atlanta double charging me for a night's stay and then blaming Booking.Com, which is unreachable.  It was so representative of a person's encounter with American corporate structure, to sneakily rip and tear the unsuspecting consumer and when he or she complains then to blame the consumer ("you deliberately and purposefully reserved two rooms, sir") and there is no redress for the little person, especially under republican rule. and their total disdain for any sort of meaningful regulation of rapacious monied interests.

The coming year will be the best of (recent) times.  Us patriotic Americans won't allow anything less, unless we aren't permitted to get beyond the prevalent extreme gerrymandering foisted upon us by Republican legislatures, blatant voter suppression underlining photo-ID laws coming out of GOP statehouses, unethical, immoral and antidemocratic voter rolls purging given us by, you guessed it, Republican Secretaries of State in places like Ohio and Georgia, and the inherently unfair and stifling electoral college which enables the minority to tyrannize the majority.

Associations Renewed and Maintained

This year I renewed or maintained in my retirement friendships that I wouldn't want to slip away.  Yesterday I went running with a friend and former colleague whom I hadn't seen since before Trump was inaugurated.  I remember that encounter (also a run) because he was telling me then how, despite what we all already knew about this loudmouthed unqualified, corrupt stumblebum, there was a way he might surprise us when he took office and become presidential.  Now my friend predicts that catastrophic, perhaps apocryphal, events may occur soon.  Who am I to say that this viewpoint is fantastical?

When I took a week-long car trip through the south over the July Fourth weekend, rather than be around town to listen to an old, foolish, loudmouthed crackpot on the National Mall, surrounded by "his" tanks, rant on about the Revolutionary War troops "taking over airports".  During my trip I stopped in to stay for a night as a guest of my BFF during my last year at SIA before I went off to boarding school for four years.  He lives alone in an old port city in South Carolina and I was glad to catch up with him after several years of not seeing him.  He has had occurrences in his life as a parent that are eerily similar to mine.  We went out on the town that night and the next morning I got up before dawn and ran 2 miles in the stifling summertime heat of a seaboard southern city before I left after sunup to further pursue my trip.

In January I took a car trip to stop in overnight to see my cousin and her husband in Hampton, Virginia.  I hadn't seen them since shortly before the last presidential election where, during a restaurant dinner with her extended family present, it became abundantly clear that politically I was supporting a clear upcoming winner (the qualified former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton) and victimhood resentment was obviously abounding on the part of her larger family when I was asked why all democrats maintained that all Trump supporters were uneducated (stupid, I guess), because didn't I know that many Trumpites had P'Hd's?  I felt a little ambushed as I allowed as to how undoubtedly there were many Trump supporters who had received an education somewhere and let it go at that because Clinton was so overwhelmingly predicted to win handily.  After Trump won, we didn't speak much for a couple of years.  When I visited this year, I walked on the beach with my cousin and her dog early the next morning and we had a short, hesitant political discussion about the "deep state" and the "criminal presidency" and I guess that's a start because we both listened respectfully to each other.  It did seem like two ships passing in the night on divergent courses though, with me knowing that my assertions were based on actual facts and believing that her assertions about the "dirty dems" must be based on what she perceived to be as facts.

During that trip I stopped in to see my college roommate on the Inner Banks of North Carolina who I visit occasionally.  He lives alone in a house on stilts in hurricane country on the bank of the New Bern River and I enjoy visiting him because we sometimes sit around on his screened-in porch watching the river flow, eating fish and sipping beer.  One of the last times I visited him I canvassed locally with him for a few days in 2016, monitoring early-voting at the courthouse for the Democratic party where, I'll never forget, a big ole caricature of a Southern elderly male voter took me aside and whispered in my ear, "You all are on the wrong side, boy."  I laughed him off to myself because it was so obvious to me at the time that America was on an upward orb to ever more greatness.  Little did I know the dark underside of Amerika being hidden inside the fetid belly of the outdated, republic-killing electoral college.  My friend this year was looking to move out of his tiny coastal village, where life was awful slow, and move into a bigger seaport town so we toured the towns of Oriental and Southport, looking at their downtowns and nearby residential neighborhoods and looking at residences for sale.  It was an interesting trip wherein I saw a person I thought I once knew well but never really did in the least.

My Christmas Day

I had a wonderful Christmas day, mostly.  I went at noon to my favorite gourmet pizzeria for lunch, hoping somebody amongst the families of my three children, all adults now, would finally mature enough as human beings to put aside their induced hatreds from the bitter divorce two decades ago that their mother fully and purposefully enmeshed them in as tender, immature children, but no such luck there.

I returned home and went for a short run on the beautiful, clear day, reflecting on my blessings that I had at least been enabled by the good Lord to be able to provide safety and shelter and support and coaching (both figuratively and literally) and means and guidance and love and full, free education through college to each my three sons until each reached maturity and later forgiveness, and that I had and have always been there for them as a father and a man.  I then packed up my Christmas tree which I had set up on my covered side porch and drove it over to a friend's house where I spent the remainder of the daylight hours in the true spirit of the holiday, sharing it with a loved one.

We trimmed the tree at her house and it looked pretty Christmasy when we were done.  We exchanged a few gifts and opened presents.

I cooked a sumptuous brunch and we enjoyed each other's company listening to carols and discussing the prospects of an even better year in the offing, especially for our mortally threatened country, imperiled stunningly and perniciously from domestic enemies acting either through reckless ignorance or self-aggrandizing, rapacious malice.  Then because my vision has been compromised at least temporarily due to my year of successive eye surgeries during the past year which makes it more difficult to drive at night, we packed up my car and I returned home before the gathering gloom at day's end turned into fully enveloping darkness.

Merry Christmas 2019

Merry Christmas to all.  The most beautiful tree I came across this year on my annual Holiday Lights run is the Library of Congress tree.

Season's Greetings from my house to yours, especially to my long-estranged children.  Today I'll stop by Westover to see if those bad boys of mine have finally gotten over their brainwashing during the divorce by their mother and her cadre of wicked, well, evil courthouse riff-raff like Meg (who is still destroying other families with cold aplomb), charlatan Victor, scumbag Joe, unethical or worse Bill, and all the other divorce lawyers (spots reserved for y'all on the lowest rung of hell) and mental health "professionals" who, as mature mercenary adults, knowingly helped to murder the childhoods of my children at their oh-so tender ages back then, scarring them for life.

The National Tree from a few years ago.  I led a group of runners out at noon from work to run by it.

The National Tree this year.  Here's to a better next year, when we can start restoring America's greatness after three years of wallowing in the sewer due to ignorance, myopia, perceived victimhood and desperate false hope leading to blind unthinking cult worship.

The year in review Part 4

Yesterday was a measure of progress in my running during the current year.  Remember, I started my return to running in May after a two-year layoff due to an achilles strain and then more seriously, retina degeneration in my right eye requiring four eye surgeries, two of them emergency operations ("We need to operate today.  Who can you call right now to come pick you up afterwards?").

Fortunately I saved the sight in that eye, although it's diminished.  Once my eye healed from the last procedure in April, I started running again on a drastically reduced schedule, three times a week, starting off with a half mile at a time.  Because I am (or was) a certified running coach, I know that practically all novice (or returning) running plans falter due to running too far and too fast at the outset, thus crashing and burning, so I carefully adhered to a ridiculously low mileage and slow pace blueprint the first few months, even though I couldn't even run two blocks the first day, having to stop and walk it in heaving and gasping, a pathetic performance.

Four months later, on August 27th, I felt the need to gauge my progress by running a measured mile in my neighborhood as fast as I was able to.  I was disappointed to break a ten-minute mile the wrong way with a time of 10:13, but it was an honest effort and indicated some sort of progress.

Yesterday, four months after the last timed-mile run, I repeated the test over the same course.  I was pleased to be under ten minutes this time with a 9:26, an improvement in 120 days of 37 seconds, or about 9 seconds faster per 440 yards (141.5 or 2:22 quarters--slow!),  even though I do no speed work and I have cut back my mileage considerably each week as a gesture to my age being closer to seventy than sixty now, but I was incredibly fagged at the end of the mile.  Still, it is a sign of progress, with room for continuing improvement.

The year in review Part 3

In September I mostly concentrated on making my running better.  Although it seemed like a long time since May when I had come back after two years off, progress was slow.  I ran a timed mile in 10:13, disappointing in that it was over 10 minutes (early in the decade I could do a sub 7:00) but at least it showed I was up to the point assigning myself challenging tasks.  I was up to 12 weekly miles, running three times a week, with a long run of five miles, but aches and pains were cropping up in my ankles, knees, feet and calfs, a warning sign.  I decided to cut my mileage way back so I could continue running three times a week to maintain the continuity I had achieved so far.  I ran through the District a few times, running by some beautiful spots like the National Floral Library, below, alongside the picturesque Tidal Basin.

In October, with trepidation, I ran my first race in five years, a 5K in Bluemont Park.  I was happy just to finish it, in 32:39, my slowest 5K ever by a few minutes, but it was a step along the way to participating in a meaningful way in recreational running again.

In November I took a drive along the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park with a friend, as we usually do every year.  We saw a bear shamble across the roadway this year.  He was given all the time he needed to casually perambulate the ribbon of asphalt and disappear into the brush by waiting motorists.  I went to Columbus for Thanksgiving and enjoyed a couple of hockey games, a couple of runs, an interesting conversation with a table full of old men Trumpites I crashed at a McDonald's there early one morning, a delicious holiday feast and spending time with family members at my sister's house.

In December I went on three Christmas Tree Runs in the District (one was actually a walk and bicycle affair after attending a demonstration at the Capitol), and our dangerous faux president was impeached, an historical event which will possibly correct our veering course down the timeline of world history.  Stay tuned.

The year in review Part 2

Once I got back from Europe in April, I had my fourth and last eye surgery, putting my eye woes behind me at least for now.  In May I picked up running after a two-year layoff, once my eye healed.  I had electricity woes inside my house where half my electrical outlets would suddenly click off inexplicably, including my TV, refrigerator and bedroom lights and then suddenly come back on minutes or hours later, for seemingly no reason.  It cost me three weeks and a couple of thousand dollars to fix (I needed a new outside box) and involved permits from the city, visits from Public Service and many headaches.  If that fix hadn't worked, the next step (inside re-wiring) would have started at $15,000.  I maintained ties with a few former colleagues by having lunch about once a month with somebody or other.  The spring flowers about the neighborhood and in the District were a pleasing splash of color as usual.  I attended a graduation party put on at a local hotel by my neighbors for two of their daughters who had graduated from college, one with an advanced degree.  It represented a timeless American immigration tale, the parents came to America from Bolivia not knowing English and both were schoolteachers by trade.  They took menial jobs, worked hard and long, bought the house next door, sent their children to the excellent public schools in the area, and became citizens.  Now their children are college graduates who speak English but very little Spanish and have good jobs in the cybersecurity area.  The latest in the ever present wave of migrations washing over our shores, making America great.

I continued my return to running slowly and painfully in June by running three times a week, although only a mile and a half or two at a time, running a few times in the District, such as running through the Mary Livingston Ripley Park on the Mall as pictured below.  As the month wore on I decided to skip out of town over the July 4th holiday because I didn't want to be in town while our president commandeered the celebration of our country on that day and made it all about himself.  The Revolutionary War soldiers capturing airports indeed!  I planned a car trip through the south.

In July I drove through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee to see some sites and attend a baseball game at the new Atlanta Braves park, where I hadn't seen a game yet.  The Braves won that baseball game but Bryce Harper hit a home run for the Phillies, the new park underwhelmed me, the Atlanta Stadium Motel 6 I stayed at ripped me off by double billing me then claiming I had reserved two rooms (yeah, right) and refused to reverse one of the charges.  Effin Southerners with their phony, slow and cloying sweetness.  Places I visited were Corolla on the Outer Banks where I swam in the ocean, the Currituck Lighthouse, a couple of coastal towns in North Carolina, Charleston, Andersonville, Chickamauga Civil War Battlefield, Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga, The D-Day Memorial in Bedford, and Appomattox Court House.  It beat listening to someone bloviate on the National Mall.  Persons I visited were my sister and her family, my college roommate, and my best friend in ninth grade.

In August I took another car trip, this time to the midwest.  I went to Maryland, West Virginia. Pennsylvania and Ohio.  I visited the Flight 93 9-11 Memorial near Shanksville, Morgantown, and spent some time enjoying Columbus at the house of my sister, where I enjoyed hanging out in a college setting with two of her her three sons, like her middle child, below.

The year in review

As 2019 draws to a close, an historic year which was ushered in with the Republican death-grip on our country being broken by the wave of freshman Democratic congresspeople coming to DC to restore representative government and finished with a rogue president being impeached, I reflect back on its start, remembering the trip I took in January to Hampton to visit my cousin and her husband.  I went for an early morning walk on Buckroe Beach with my cousin and her dog and we briefly and hesitantly talk politics, and got to understand each other's point of view a little better, if we listened.  I heard about the danger of the deep state and she heard about the peril of the criminal presidency.  We listened respectfully and responded moderately, and she said things that I still think about.  From there I went to North Carolina to visit my college freshman roommate at his house on stilts on the Inner Banks.  We attended the funeral of a World War II veteran, the father of someone special to him, and then traveled down the coast touring small towns where he might like to move to like Oriental and Southport.  As we drove around I suddenly saw someone whom I knew in another life, who I did not care to even wave to.  It was an interesting trip.

Two of my three long-estranged children have birthdays in February so as had been my won't since the youngest one turned 18, I went at noon on each of their birthdays, and also on President's Day, to a restaurant in Westover near where they grew up to have lunch, in the hope that one or more of them might come by so we might start living the first day of the rest of our lives together again.  No luck so far!

In March I travelled overseas for the first time ever and went to spend a few days in Oxford and London with two friends of mine.  They planned the trip and invited me to come along and I am eternally grateful to them, especially since one of them went to Oxford and so knew how to perambulate that ancient, venerable town.  But best of all, after England, we went to France for a few days, spending them in Bayeux, Normandy.  It was 75 years since the D-Day invasion at the nearby beaches and we took two whole days touring all five landing sites, two American beaches and three Commonwealth beaches.  At the end of March I stood on Omaha Beach, site of one of the most famous battles in not only American but also world history, ranking alongside Cannae, Hastings, Trafalgar, Yorktown, Gettysburg, Midway and Stalingrad in importance in changing the fortunes of history.  One hundred yards of beach led from the water's edge to the false protection of a sea wall at Omaha, and for six hours American boys huddled underneath its scant, inadequate protection as the issue of a successful Allied landing on the European continent was in doubt.  Hundreds died there while Nazis dug into hardened positions along the overlooking ridge line raked them with murderous fire.  But by the end of the day the Americans had persevered and had slogged inland several hundred yards, thus preserving the center of the entire five-beach seaborne lodgment and saved the invasion itself, which would have faltered and perhaps been been sliced in half and driven off shore if the center, Omaha Beach, had failed.  I felt a reverence at being there, the same feeling I had the next day as I viewed the thousands of gravestones at the American Cemetery overlooking the beach.

April saw us in Paris, after a stopover at Giverny.  We passed right by the Arc de Triomphe as we drove in and took 10 minutes to cross a bridge over the Seine (traffic in Paris is terrible!) with the Eiffel Tower just off our left side.  My friends flew back to the states the next day but I stayed over for two more days and loved my time in Paris, even though I don't know any French.  I discovered by accident that if I started a question or statement in my best French ("Ou est . . .") then switched into my high school Spanish the French listener would seem to appreciate my attempt at learning their language, be amused but soon grow impatient with my seemingly ignorant reversion to bad Spanish and sometimes answer me in English.  I toured or walked by Notre Dame (two weeks before it burned), Montmartre, the Basilica Sacre-Couer, the Church of St. Pierre, the Paris Opera, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Musee d'orsay, and Versailles, which was my favorite.  The gardens were amazing, the palace was cool but best of was the Hall of Mirrors.  As a schoolboy I read about Louis Quatorze, the Sun God, with his Hall of Mirrors as emblematic of his power and prestige.  I was thrilled to walk through it a half-century later.

   

Christmas Trees in the District

The District is full of beautiful Christmas Trees at this time of the year if you know where to find them, like this one in the Library of Congress, easy to get into, no ID required, there's almost never a line and the restrooms are good.

Take a self portrait on the giant ornaments gracing the outdoor tree on the porch of the Canadian Embassy.

Stop by the Peace Officer Tree outside the municipal DC Courthouse on Indiana Street NW, where many of the ornaments specifically memorialize slain police officers.

Union Station has a spectacular tree in its rotunda, presented each year by Norway, and there is a busy, expansive food court down below and inside access to the Red Line of the Metro.

The Botanical Gardens at the foot of the Capitol has a tree with a Thomas the Engine train running around its base.

You could imagine this largely unadorned evergreen outside its entrance as a Christmas tree if you're in the proper holiday frame of mind.

Or this potted evergreen tree near the Mary L. Ripley Garden by the Smithsonian Textile Museum next door to the bigger Enid A. Haupt Garden.

Inside the Willard Hotel, which has fabulous bathrooms, there are public alcoves decorated with little trimmed trees where upon glancing up at a portrait on the wall, you'd see you are in the presence of Abe Lincoln and his sons.