Mary Dickey. Failed Computer. Apple Store. Tek Serve. 240th anniversary of the Marines. Russian Doping. George W Bush. George H.W. Bush. Dick Cheney. Donald Rumsfeld. Syria. Assad. Aleppo.
It is late in the afternoon and I’m in the city, where it has been raining or drizzling all this grey day.
If you, like my friend Mary Dickey, have noticed I have not been posting, it is because on Friday of last week, I dumped a glass of water onto my laptop. It didn’t recover. I let it dry from Friday until Monday morning. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Yesterday was a very full day so I determined I would use today, which was relatively unscheduled, to deal with this. Since it didn’t return to life this morning, I went to my breakfast with old friend David McKillop and went from him to the Apple Store in Grand Central Station, where a very nice young lady named Karen sold me a new MacAir. Then young Jason and I attempted to port over the data on my back-up drive.
In what was a nightmare moment, Jason and I realized, after much effort, that it, too, was dead and none of those king’s men could put that Humpty back together again.
They sent me from the Apple Store to Tek Serve where a very nice young ex-Marine helped me get the data off the failed drive and onto another drive, from which I could extract the data I needed.
That he was an ex-Marine was found out when I asked him how his day was. He told me that he was an ex-Marine and that today is the 240th anniversary of the Marines and when he was off work, he and a few buddies were going to celebrate.
Leaving there, I sat down and extracted the data I needed from the restored back-up drive, sorted through all the 1300 emails that downloaded from the server and then determined I would write a letter, to let those who have been wondering about my absence, know my trials and travails.
Being without a laptop has not been totally a curse. I have done a good amount of reading since Friday. i think I have gone through at least two books.
But it does feel good to be re-connected with the outside world via laptop.
It has come to my attention from reading off my phone that the Russians have been accused of condoning and perhaps encouraging their athletes to dope. Imagine my surprise when I read that! Just as shocked as Claude Rains was in “Casablanca” that there was gambling in Rick’s Cafe.
There is a FOURTH GOP debate tonight and we’re still a year away from the election. Jeb is in a tough place and needs to break through tonight, say the pundits, or he’ll be in much more trouble than he is.
“Pappy” Bush, George H.W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States and father of George W. Bush, our 43rd President, has just published a book that is more than a bit cutting about Cheney and Rumsfeld. I’m not surprised but when asked about his father’s comments, “W” expressed surprise.
What did the Bushes talk about on Thanksgiving? Certainly not about the country they were running.
The University of Missouri has lost it’s two top officials in a protest on the handling of race relations.
Today is also Diwali, the Festival of Lights in India. Twenty years ago I was in New Delhi, celebrating the festival by riding an elephant down the streets and watching a barrage of fireworks from every side. It was a surreal but exciting experience. I went back to my hotel with a swirl of light rotating in my eyes.
During that time, Discovery Channel, for whom I was working, officially launched in India with a party at the American Embassy. There were fireworks then, too. An Embassy official, looking much like he could be a character in some Graham Greene novel, sidled up to me and confided there hadn’t been fireworks since Jackie. Kennedy.
The night I left India for the first time, the Minister for Human Resources, with whom I had visited, was arrested for appropriating 16 million dollars to his personal use.
There is still a refugee crisis and Germany is beginning to have its patience exhausted. The fighting continues in Syria with the Assad government claiming to have lifted the two year long siege of Aleppo.
In other words, while I have been feeling almost lost without my MacAir anchor, the world has continued on.
But now I’m back!
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 11 13 15 Poor Paris…
November 13, 2015Paris. City of Light. Paris shootings. Stade de France. Arc de Triomphe. President Hollande. Bataclan Theater.
The sun is setting and the land is turning a dusky grey; white clouds reflect the fading light. I am curled up in the cottage and have lit a fire; tonight will be the chillest night yet – down into the 30’s. The trees have been stripped of their leaves and tomorrow should be the last clearing of the year.
In the late 1970’s I spent part of a summer in Paris, living in a little apartment in the 16th Arrondissement at 73 Rue Chardon La Gache. It was a magical time in a magical city. Anti-Americanism among the French was at its height but I experienced only one small incidence of that, in a McDonald’s near the Arc de Triomphe.
As I sit here writing, it is reported that 18 people have been killed in a series of shootings in the 10th. More blood in Paris, the “City of Light.” More have been injured. I am trying to grasp this and find it difficult. It is too early, say the reports, to determine that this is another terrorist attack. President Hollande, who was in the area, has been evacuated as are several neighborhoods near the shootings.
In refreshing my browser, the death toll has risen to 28 and there are reports of explosions near Stade de France, which is where Hollande was, with the German Foreign Minister, watching a soccer game between the two countries.
Hostages have been taken in the Bataclan Theater where a heavy metal band from California was performing.
When I was in Paris, I walked miles a day, passing through, I’m sure, the streets that are now scenes of chaos. One night a group of Americans, myself included, stood beneath the Eiffel Tower at two in the morning and sang “The Star Spangled Banner.” A gendarme looked at us and shook his head: those crazy Americans and because it was so late the Metro was closed so we all walked to our homes across Paris, unafraid, feeling as safe and secure as we could have anywhere.
That is not the Paris of now.
I have been back a few times since then. Paris has seemed to me like Colette when she was older rather than Colette the younger, which is what she seemed to me when I was there in my twenties, living out, briefly, my “Lost Generation” moment.
Now, tonight with jazz playing, I mourn for the “City of Light” through which darkness is passing. It seems particularly cruel that Paris, noted for its gaiety and joy of life, has been singled out this year for so much sorrow.
Tags:City of Light, Colette, Lost Generation, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Paris, Paris shootings, President Hollande, Stade la France
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