Monica and I have been pining for travel in general and Europe in particular.  Over 3 years have passed since we left Ireland, and time and money never seem to show up hand in hand.  

Although there were other things we might have done (without 15 teenagers in tow) we thoroughly enjoyed our trip over to France (and for Monica, to England as well, of course).

Our days in St. Avertin, Tours and the surrounding Touraine were wonderful.  The heart of the trip was the stay in St. Avertin with the host families.  Last fall twenty-some students from College Jules Romains traveled to Pine Point on an exchange.   It was a great success.

And that success was rewarded by a huge welcome for the Pine Point students as they were taken in by the local families.

The Zenonis, Marc, Natalie, Antoine and Charlotte were marvelous -- down to earth, cosmopolitan, with a warm and easy hospitality.  We should know better than to strike up friendships with people who live 3,500 miles distant, but we couldn't help it.  With luck we'll convince them to put Rhode Island on their itinerary.

(I've sometimes

 wondered about that sudden friendship that happens -- especially in travels.  Just people that you meet -- you may not know the details of their lives -- but you know them -- perhaps because you sense a shared understanding of the heart of things.)

Travels with the Pine Point students

On our last sunny day in Paris we took the train to Versailles to walk the rooms of the great palace -- and afterwards a stroll past the Petit Palace to the Champs-Elysees. Three groups with different shopping styles headed up along the avenue toward the Arc de Triomphe. We reconvened back in the Latin Quarter for a final dinner.

The Eiffel Tower, Catacombs and the Louvre

Arrival in Paris

Last Day in Tours

In Amboise, we visited Clos Luce, the residence where Leonardo da Vinci passed his last three years.  The house and gardens there were filled with his inventions and reproductions of some of his great art.  From there we walked to the town's great castle, Chateau d'Amboise for a tour of the grounds and battlements.

The students spent the morning at the College Jules Romains de Saint Avertin with their friends -- visiting classes, watching a very impressive dress rehearsal and having lunch in the cafeteria. But afterwards, they left them to their studies and we made our way into the city of Tours for a guided walk of the historic downtown.

We spent the morning walking in the local forest with Marc and Natalie, our host parents, while their children Antoine and Charlotte slept in.  In the afternoon, we reconnected with the students at Rochecorbon for a boat trip upon the Loire.  Elaborate houses and wine cellars (and even a silk factory) have been burrowed into the soft tufa limestone that make up the cliffs south of the river.

In the morning we were taken into the souterrains, des sources du Limancon - a series of underground tunnels and reservoirs that were excavated beneath St. Avertin long ago to bring water to the fountains of Tours.  From there we went to the town's cultural center at Chateau Cange where our guides took us to the glacier or ice storage cave that was hewn deep in the cliffside.




In the afternoon the host families took us all to Chateau Chenonceau, a magnificent castle set upon the Loire river.

In the afternoon the host families took us all to Chateau Chenonceau, a magnificent castle set upon the Cher river.

After the overnight flight to Heathrow, we met Monica and her dozen 9th-graders for the flight on to Paris.

From there we took the high-speed rail to Saint Avertin, where the host families greeted us with tremendous warmth.  (The train is famous for being on time, but I think we managed to make it late.)

After lunch on Thursday the French teachers and I gathered up a trio of 8th graders to head off to Newark Airport, for the flight to London.

Click on the link and you can follow Monica's travels in England with the ninth-graders of Pinepoint School.

There are always certain currents in the flux of living that press us with a stressfulness -- to tighten the muscles of the neck and face and scalp -- to erode our good tempers with anxiousness and impatience -- to grapple at our ankles and thwart the dance.

Usually it's just a buffet here or there.  But not the last few weeks.

At work where a big project was going off the rails; and in an academic job hunt that was getting little traction; and Monica was off to London a week ago and I am leaving for France the day after tomorrow; and my parents are arriving and I've got to pack up the boys and batten the hatches and prepare the pets for a week and a half of gone-ness; and Porter was behind on his big homework project; and I'm not getting any exercise and I'd like a doctor to look at my jaw; and the Crossing Over ceremony for the webelos is closing in while my attention and competence ebbs away; and the economy is bad and maybe even terminal; and global climate shock is liable to make it all moot anyway; and I'm not getting any doses of spirituality at the Unitarian Church; and on top of all that there's no bread in the house to make sandwiches for the boys' lunch.

And I can't tell whether I have any of my shit together or not. 

Yeah, well, tomorrow I make like a shaman and braid all my distressing and disparate stress-currents into a nice wet tapestry of competence and preparedness.  'Cause I have to get on a plane to Paris, dammit.

Forcing spring,

Monica snapped a twig from the quince and set it in a vase.

The swelling buds and blossoms are a cheat, of course, but then, winter never plays fair either.

Photos by P.B.

On Sunday we had brunch in Essex at the Griswold Inn.  Nico especially loved the old, cluttered space.  Mmmmm . . . waffles.  A man on the town green was carving eagles from wood with a chainsaw, making a racket and a stench and an entertaining spectacle.  In the harbor the ice was melting and a flock of mergansers preened not far from a bald eagle strolling along the ice-edge.

We drove northward along the Connecticut river, stopping briefly at the winter carnival in Chester.  Crossing the river at the Goodspeed Opera House, we made our way down to Gillette Castle.  

From the cliffs Monica and I watched the eagles that over-winter there, while the boys raced around the grounds.  It's stunning to watch the great birds as they ride the air currents and hunt for fish in the river.

The winter wired household:

I spent the evening filing a couple of months worth of household bills, reports, receipts, bank statements, pay stubs and so on.  

They used to view the Cold War as a great contest between opposing ideologies -- the capitalistic open society versus the communist closed one.  But in reality each Weltanschauung (such as it was) lost out to the reigning ideological practice of the 20th century -- bureaucratism.  It is the bureaucracy that won.

And now, the struggle for the soul of the 21st century is not really West versus jihad or state versus terror.  It's about the valences of bureaucratism: two extreme and contrastive versions of the praxis.  On the one hand there is the bureaucracy as a utilitarian construction for a rule of law, procedure and objectivity -- something that could conceivably serve to bolster equality and even the common good.  (This is the reason why bureaucracies are created in the first place -- so that people get treated "fairly," and according to the rules.)

On the other hand, there is bureaucracy's capacity to serve as a framework for cronyism, corruption and just another arena for Machiavellian power play.  

In the American version of this, the Bush administration exemplified the latter valence.  Their impatience with the rule of law and their co-opting  the offices and regulations of governing to enrich themselves and their cronies may pale in comparison to China or Nigeria, but they are radicals by our standards.  The EU is probably the mirror image of this, with all its elaborate institutional contortions meant to bleed politics dry.

In a sense, if Al Qaeda actually were to exist as they portray it, its true radicalism would be not in its tired Islamicist posturing, but in its frightening effort to bureaucratize the practice of international terror.  

Food for thought in any case.

If I were going to do something utterly and fatally insane, it would be this:

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Holy crap.