Nous sommes tous Paris

I first saw Paris more than 35 years ago. Specifically, around 2100 of an October night, I tumbled out of a motor coach from Calais, boxed bicycle, panniers and a knapsack all my worldly goods. It was a rough arrival—figuring out how to stash my bike at the Consigné at the Gare du Nord, use a pay phone to call a down-market hotel in the Let’s Go France guide book, and managing to make it to the place.

I was so tired that I actually thought I’d forgotten how to speak French—I made the concierge spell out the directions and still I was convinced she was just making things up.

But that city still managed to grab my heart and hold on to it all this time. That first trip was an official pilgrimage—the starting point on the journey to Santiago de Compostela. Every visit since has been an unofficial one. I fell in love with the place, but with a love that sees the flaws and still forgives them.

I spent the next four nights at a student foyer and explored the city as much as you could without any money. I retrieved my bicycle (which later came to be known as l’Escargot Rouge) and some perfect stranger passing by at the Gare helped me set the handlebars straight. Somehow I came across the Tour Saint Jacques, all that remains of the church that was the embarkation place for medieval pilgrims headed to Santiago, so that’s where I officially set out on the 1100-mile trek.

On my return swing, six weeks later, I spent an…interesting night, completely unexpected. Paris has a way of doing that to you.

Months later I had a conversation with a very well-traveled woman who assured me that everyone has two “favorite” cities: whatever the other one is and Paris. As far as I’m concerned, she was right.

Yeah, I know—it’s not paradise, and it’s not for everyone. Parisians practically invented the term “attitude”; they certainly give it better than anyone else, including New Yorkers. I don’t care. I love the layers of history going all the way back to Lutetia, interwoven and expressed in a thousand ways. I love the medieval rabbit warren streets and the expansive boulevards (which were purpose-built to prevent the people from building barricades; sadly—or gloriously, depending on your point of view—this intent turned out to be unsuccessful). I love the grands magasins and hole-in-the-wall shops, the parks, the skyline, the sounds and the smells.

To this day, the scent of wet pavement mixed with diesel exhaust fumes sends me back to that first trip as fast as a madeleine evoked childhood for Proust.

The murders at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher grocery store in Paris last January broke my heart. I don’t know why I thought that was as bad as it would get, and yesterday showed me how pig ignorant I was in this regard. Synchronized attacks with explosives and assault weapons on restaurants, a concert, a soccer game; scores dead and hundreds wounded.

Sophisticated planning, ruthless execution; this is military-grade terror. It’s war, with my beloved Paris as the battlefield.

Le coeur est brisé.

Gimme S'More

It has become my custom to make candy for Christmas gifts. You might think it’s a little tiresome to do the same thing year on year, but it turns out that people now expect this stuff and whenever I give them something—something perfectly lovely, mind you—that’s not toffee, fudge, truffles and bark, I’m inevitably met with a crestfallen face and an almost-sobbed, “No-no candy?”

Well, all these bazillion calories don’t make themselves, so I’ve been loading up on some of the ingredients.

But that’s not really what I’m writing about today. When I went to the marshmallow aisle, I discovered something new: marshmallows on steroids: (In this photo the normal ones, which I use in the fudge, are between two packets of the “Campfire Giant Roasters”.)

I do not get the need for this, unless it’s just unbridled American excess—we make ‘em huge because we can. What would you use to hold one of these bad boys over the campfire—a pitchfork? And what happens if one falls off your roasting stick into the embers? You’d start a conflagration that could take out an entire national forest.

And in the end—you can singe the interior of your mouth just fine on the normal sized ones, and I don’t see supersized graham crackers and Hershey bars for constructing the mother-of-all-S’Mores.

But obviously my way of thinking is Bad for the Economy, so I merely express my wonder and haul out the Kitchen Aid to set to work.

No help for the holidays

This is what you end up with when stores bend over for the food Nazis—you know, the organic-only gluten-free soy-substitute vegan crowd.

I was in Trader Joe’s the other day, and I had flour on my list. Just regular old cookie-making flour. Here’s what Trader Joe’s offered me:

Yeah. I could buy gluten-free, almond or coconut flour (at totally jacked-up organo-hissy vegan prices), but no five-pound bags of the stuff you need for getting the holidays going.

I despair.

Lights in the darkness

As I mentioned yesterday, today in the US we officially honor those who serve in our armed forces. We’ve blurred this a bit, because on Memorial Day (in May), we’re meant to honor the fallen—those who’ve died on the field of battle or as a result of wounds—and on Veterans Day we honor those who serve. Which, of course, includes those who served and died.

Well, it’s not really a bad thing that we set aside two days to consider the sacrifices made by men and women who stand up for our nation, and have done so since we separated ourselves from Mother England. Seriously, these people have been picking up the tab for our freedom and comfort all this time.

Actually, we’re kind of niggardly about it if we only ever pay attention to this two days out of 365. And a lot of the attention is just vote-seeking politicians wearing $2000 suits with little American flag pins on the lapels posturing about in cemeteries pretending like they give an actual, you know, toss. Honestly—unless you’re living next to a military base, this day will be pretty much like any other, although libraries and government offices are likely to be closed, which might be minor inconveniences to our privileged lives.

This year, today is also Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, marking the triumph of good over evil. Here in the Valley They Call Silicon, Diwali is big; Veterans Day not so much. But I can live with that, because I see them as part of a continuum of the eternal struggle of mankind to seek its better angels. As with all real-life journeys, that path is not always straight, or clearly-marked, or comfortable.

I’m all for any commemoration that references the battle of light against darkness, however it might be framed. After all, isn’t that what we invoked when we created our government and reluctantly built a military establishment to defend it? Tonight my flat will be aglow with every candle I have in stock from various forays to Ikea. My tribute to those who serve.

Ladies and gentlemen, past, present and future—all props to you. I cannot thank you enough.

Dark deeds of November

The first part of November always gives me the shivers. It’s not just that we go off Daylight Saving Time, so it seems darker all of a sudden; or even that the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is Election Day here in the United States every couple of years. It’s that this is the time we acknowledge dark deeds that were done within living memory of our parents and grandparents.

First of all, on 9 November 1938, Nazis attacked synagogues, homes and businesses of Jews all over the Reich in an event that we know as Kristallnacht. I’ve written about it before, and I wish I thought we’d made 77 years of progress in the past 77 years.

(And Kristallnacht marked the 15^th anniversary of Hitler’s first attempt to seize power, what we know as the Beer Hall Putsch. This time just has bad mojo.)

This is also when several of the Allied Powers formed during the World War I remember men and women who have died in the service of their nations during wars. We do it around this time because that particular conflagration came to an end at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. We called it Armistice Day; now Veteran’s Day. To the British, on the Sunday closest to the 11^th, it’s Remembrance Sunday.

To my eyes, this commemoration seems much more deeply felt throughout Britain than ours is here, perhaps because proportionally they lost so much more in the world wars in terms of blood and treasure than we did. The first war rocked the foundations of their empire and the second shattered it. We, on the other hand, basically made our bones in the first one and sealed the deal with the next.

Over there, Remembrance Sunday is an occasion for stepping away from your life and considering what it might have been were it not for the sacrifice of the military. Over here, unless you have friends or relatives in the service, it’s an occasion for retail sales.

The big deal in Britain on Sunday was the ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall—that’s the one attended by members of the royal family, politicians and high-ranking military folk. (The Cenotaph itself was a response to the end of the First World War. Literally an “empty tomb”, smack in the heart of the governance of empire, that was meant to remind all who pass of the cost of war.) At 1100 everyone falls silent for two minutes, and then—beginning with Her Majesty—people lay wreaths, usually representations of poppies, beside the monument.

Here’s a clip of what it looked like this year, courtesy of The Telegraph.

Note how stark it looked at the beginning. And here it was shortly afterwards (courtesy of the BBC):

The ceremony was shorter this year out of concern for aging veterans who’d stand through the November cold. However, the attempt to get pols to save some time by laying their wreaths in groups instead of individually only caused them to squeal and pout like adolescent girls over the notion of being perceived as less important than God.

Some things just never change, do they?

Well—there were other ceremonies in cities, towns and villages around the UK. My friend MLD and her colleagues contributed by ringing half-muffled bells at Holy Trinity in Cookham, and she tolled the tenor for 15 minutes up to 1100. It’s hard work, keeping that slow, steady strike on such a heavy bell, but she’s glad to do it every year.

So, okay—some light in the darkness. I’ll hold on to that.

Gratitude Monday: Getting it together

A few months ago I saw a posting (well, kind of—very general) for a job in Washington, D.C. that I thought might suit me, so I emailed the recruiter and began the process that last week resulted in an offer that I accepted.

The thing is—it’s for an organization that stands for integrity in scientific inquiry, and it’s a function for which I am uniquely qualified. It involves bridging several worlds—scientific, academic, business, product management—and I am basically all about connecting people and ideas. It’s a job I’ll love doing, for an organization I can respect and support.

It was clear to me throughout the process that they’ve put considerable thought into defining both the role and the process—something I don’t see a lot of here in the Valley They Call Silicon. Last month I interviewed with a panel of six people who will be directly involved with this function, and I liked every single one of them. Smart, engaged, committed to the mission, but not waving their egos around as though they individually invented intelligence.

Over the next 45 days or so I’ll start with them while managing the relocation across the country. I don’t minimize the effort involved in that—this will be my seventh corporate interstate move. And there will be the Mother of All Spreadsheets at the heart of it. But I’m truly encouraged by the fact that, even though this is all new to them, the organization is being flexible in getting me started and situated.

It’s kind of like they think I’m a human being, and like they really want me to work with them. Go figure.

Therefore I’m sure that it comes as no surprise to you that today I’m ecstatically happy and deeply grateful that, come the New Year, I’ll be back in D.C., doing an exciting job that will really have some meaning.