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.

   

Spring Activities

Spring 2019 is behind us, every scorchingly hot 3 mile run lately has shown me that.  Springtime was a good time.  (Cherry Blossoms.)

I had my fourth, and hopefully last, eye operation in April and am on the road to a full range of activities after a year and a half layoff due to an achilles strain and then my detached retina woes.  I started running in May, half a mile at a time at the start and now up to 3 miles three times a week as I slowly progress.  (My eyebrow marked, I wait for surgery.)

I traveled overseas for my first time ever, to England and France with layovers in Eire. Once a boy has seen the sights of gay Paree, you can't keep him down on the farm anymore.  (One of the private gardens of Versailles.)

I restored old friendships, like traveling in Europe with my former running buddy Rhea and her husband Eric, and kickstarted my return to running by trying to keep up with her on a 2 mile run in an Oxford park.  Back in the states, I made sure to engage in traditional DC events like viewing the Cherry Blossom trees blooming on the Tidal Basin ( a few days after their peak) and viewing the new dinosaur display at the Smithsonian.  (Jogging in England, just like olde times.)

Paris

An  American in Paris.  That is what I was, not speaking the language, no guide books in hand, my friends having returned to America after showing me so much of both England and France so graciously, since I had never been overseas before.

The Arc de Triumph, the Left Bank and the Eiffel Tower were what I knew of Paris, and we drove by the Arc de Triumph on our way in, saw the Eiffel Tower from a bridge as we were returning our car to the rental agency and our hotel was near the Left Bank or maybe in it so, besides touring Versailles, which really isn't in Paris, and visiting a WWI battlefield, which would have involved intricate travel plans to get to and return in the same day, I was a blank slate on what I wanted to see and do.

I booked a tour of Versailles because I well remember from tenth grade history the phrase of L'etat c'est moi from Louis XIV's reign as signifying that king's godlike power and the teacher's discussion of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles reflecting France's greatness at the time, and perhaps we discussed the gardens at Versailles signifying the Sun King's opulence, heady stuff for a 15 year old about to break out in a love of history that led to a history major in college (that's why I ultimately became a lawyer).  (The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.)

As I waved goodbye to my two friends Eric and Rhea as they disappeared into the Metro station to depart for the airport, they pointed to a structure 400 meters away across the Seine and said, "That's Notre Dame."  I took that wonderment in during the next few hours and the next day I tramped from the Eiffel Tower to the Paris Opera, exploring the Place de Concord along the way, and took a tour of the hilly neighborhood of Montmartre and visited its Sacred Heart chapel overlooking Paris.  My last day in Paris I viewed the beautiful art in the Musee d'Orsay and took my tour of Versailles, which I think I will always remember as the highlight of my trip to Paris (that, and visiting Notre Dame because, horrifyingly, it burned extensively a mere two weeks later) and the next day I returned to the US and finally had my first cup of satisfying coffee in two weeks at the local McDonalds.  (Les Quatre Parties du Monde Soutenant la Sphere.)

Over There.

A few pictures from my recent (and first) trip overseas, to England and France.  (The killing ground on Omaha Beach in Normandy.)

Oxford was a very picturesque English town, an hour north of London.  (Having a draft at a pub on my first night in Oxford with my running buddy from last decade, Bex.)

London is a great city, with a lot of history in it.  (Trafalgar Square.)

Paris is Paris.  (An American tourist in the City of Lights.)

Europe at last

I was a history major at the university, and I primarily read history now.  I force myself to read literature occasionally, although once I get into a great book, I can love it.  Like reading Great Expectations recently (apparently I didn't read it in ninth grade, although we spent a whole semester on it), the first 100 pages were bewildering, the last 400 pages were pure pleasure.

Coincidentally, this year I read a book on D-Day after finishing a book on the Second World War in Europe.  Then I got a call from my friend Eric, the husband of my first and best running buddy, Rhea.  He said, "Rhea and I are going to England for my Oxford reunion and then to France to go on a personally guided tour of the D-Day beaches, and Rhea insisted that I call you to invite you to join us."  Rhea and I used to take long runs on the Mall and the trails in Northern Virginia and talk about battles, before she and Eric moved back to California a decade ago.  Yeah, that's the way she is, and me too, I guess.

So I went with them, to Oxford and London and then to Normandy to visit the D-Day beaches and then to Paris.  They both have long known that I have never been outside of North America and this has always mystified them.  They were excellent traveling companions and the perfect travelogue hosts.

I spent twelve days in England and France, flying to London to meet them and flying home from Paris after spending the last two days there alone.  Oxford was charming and London was terrific, touring the D-Day beaches on this 75th anniversary of the battles in Normandy was memorable and providentially I toured Notre Dame barely two weeks before it burned so catastrophically.  I liked spending time on each of the five D-Day beaches the best, and the impressions of the days I spent in Paris are steadily growing in my memory.  I came back just in time, with a bad cold, for my fourth and hopefully last eye surgery; after being shown the wonders of Gay Paree, I suppose it's a wonder I ever came back.