What's on my mind
This post is the first of several about a vacation we took ten years ago. The Chamber Singers of the University at Albany, an auditioned à capella chorus directed by David Griggs-Janower, were scheduled to go on a tour of Spain and France in 2007. Not enough students could go, so David recruited a few additional singers and groupies to fill… Continue reading Singing in Spain
This post is about our experience with the French health system. We have not stayed in France longer than three weeks at a time, give or take a couple of days. So we cannot talk about long term interaction with the French medical system. Wonderful as it is, being in France does not protect you from colds,… Continue reading Getting Medical Care in France
How can we win next time? I do not need to go over the long list of Trump's transgressions. I take it for granted that he should never have been nominated by the Republicans, and should never have been elected. I recall however, that when Reagan was elected, and GW Bush later, they won despite sticking… Continue reading How We Democrats Can Win
The morning showed streets shiny from an overnight rain. People were wearing jackets or carrying umbrellas. It was 57°F. Our plan was to stay home until it was time to go to the Opera, for which we had a voucher purchased online. It was June 6, the 73rd anniversary of the invasion of Normandy by the… Continue reading A Rainy Day in Paris
The book collection in the apartment where we stay has always been of interest. This time I picked up Michel Houllebecq's La Carte et Le Territoire, winner of the 2010 Prix Goncourt. The same author later published a book imagining France as an Islamic state in the future, coincidentally on the day of the… Continue reading I Meet Michel Houellebecq, Learn a Story about Putin and François Hollande, Dine at Florimond, and Do Not Dine at Bustronome
In this post I just want to convey something of what it was like to be on the ship. After leaving Passau, we passed through Vilshofen and caught a glimpse of a crew on the river. Undeniably blue, at least in this picture! Every meal on board was a treat. Here is a dessert for… Continue reading Along the Danube to The Walhalla Memorial
We chose our Viking tour primarily because it offered a day in Vienna, which we had never visited. We scheduled a full day: a bus tour of the city in the morning, a visit to the Schonbrunn palace in the afternoon, and a concert in the evening. Our guide was a British citizen named Martin… Continue reading Our Day in Vienna
Not far from the Budapest Hilton there is a memorial to Ferenc Kazinczy. On top of a pedestal is depicted a woman holding a tea candle. There is a medallion on the pedestal with Kazincy's profile. The monument was built in 1931, the 100th anniversary of Kazinczy's death. Kazinczy was a translator, epistolarian, and a… Continue reading In Search of Tradition
This post is about a tour guide's insight into the emergence of Hungary from foreign domination. The guide was Agnes K, a retired schoolteacher. Her tour concentrated on the Pest side, particularly government and political sites, followed by a traditional Hungarian restaurant that was partly a museum of cultural history. Agnes showed us a statue… Continue reading Some Insight into Hungarian Political History
In 1992 on vacation we visited The Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels and saw an exhibit of an African, housed in a glass case, dating from the 19th century. This was not a statue or a model, but the preserved body of a human being, exhibited as is if it were a… Continue reading The Persistence of Racism
