StanleyWheeler

It was still Thursday. We left the Arc de Triomphe to begin our walk down the Champs-Elysees .  No trip to Paris is complete without a stroll down the Champs-Elysees . It was a bit of a walk. My wife didn't want to go into the fancy stores along the way. It was getting late, so we just wanted to enjoy the walk to the Louvre. Google tells me that the distance is 4.5 kilometers. That's just short of 3 miles in real measurement. It wasn't a bad walk...it was a very nice walk...but there were complications. Now that we had left the monument with the free restroom, my companion informed me that she needed to use the bathroom--complication number 1. We were also getting thirsty. I bought another Orangina--the precursor to complication number 2.  We made an attempt at addressing complication number 1 in the long park that runs along a portion of the thoroughfare. A sign indicted that use of the facility would be 2 euros. The place looked a little off-putting...so ...

Combat! Season 1 Episode 6: Missing in Action The opening begins on a hunk of a German plane heavily decorated with bullet holes and some chalk writing…indicating the 465 th Bomber Wing. I would guess that pilots are going to play a big role in this episode. A colonel explains a mission to assembled pilots—the same railyards they’ve been trying to bomb. We learn that they will pick up a fighter escort in Rouen. A Lt. wants to know when they’ll be moving off this milk run. The colonel segues into an invitation to a dance that the nurses will also be attending…with heavy drinking and no curfew. As another Lt. explains the details of the air mission, we become privy to the colonel’s thoughts. He lights a cigarette…he’s reminiscing about another mission (or is it this mission? I’m not sure.). It started out as a milk run. At Rouen, the Germans began hitting them. 109’s took out the bomber on his right. Two of his engines were on fire. He couldn’t keep the plane i...

Perhaps even more well-known than the opening lines of the novel, is Tom's grand tour de force with the whitewash.  Chapter 2 of TATS ( The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ) begins with a description of a cheerful, dreamy, Saturday morning. Twain juxtaposes that pleasant atmosphere with Tom and his bucket of whitewash; Tom is in deep melancholy. He faces 30 yards of 9 feet tall fence. (Not unlike a writer's blank page, or screen, waiting to be filled with words). After a couple swipes with the whitewash, Tom sits down, discouraged (Writer's block?). Soon Jim comes along on his way to fill the water bucket. Tom, after a series of bribes, culminating with a look at his sore big toe, convinces Jim to let him take the bucket for water while Jim works on the whitewash. Aunt Polly, armed with a slipper, sends Jim on his way for the water. Tom is back to whitewashing.  Tom thinks of his friends and the activities that he had planned. He grows sadder as he contemplates how they ...

“TOM!”  No answer.  “TOM!” No answer.  “What’s gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!” Those are the opening lines of one of the most famous of American novels--Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . I was recently reminded, while boasting of the superiority of Huckleberry Finn over that earlier work, that it had been many years since I had last read that great American classic about the young Monsieur Sawyer. Having just finished my latest free book from Amazon Prime, it seemed like a good time to read some real literature.  Although I remain singularly unqualified to review great literature--I've never read any critical treatment or even Cliff Notes on Tom Sawyer , have no relevant advanced degree or recognition, and I am woefully deficient in my stock of keen insights and witty observations--I've never let that stop me before. I do know what I like; I like Mark Twain's writings. (In the last year or two, I read for the first time Twain's Personal...

The Thursday continued.  We left Sacre Coeur, walking down the near infinity steps, down the street, past the little shop where we had purchased the bag, and back to the metro. The red book sheet for the day showed us at step 15 (of 22) getting on the M12 at Anvers. Step 16 had us ride to CDG Etoile; 17 was visiting the Arc de Triomphe.  And I have no idea who the person in the white jacket with the upraised arms might be; just some other tourist; but it really makes the picture come alive.  From the outside, the monument seems huge. It seems even taller when one is going up the stairs inside. Before we got to those stairs, we had to take a tunnel under the roundabout and come up in the center where the Arc stands. There was nothing unusual about going through the metal detector... except that I kept setting it off. The people behind us were losing patience. Finally, the guard just passed us through without any groping or stripping...in spite of the rather rude sug...

Combat! Season 1 Episode 5: Far From The Brave Player Characters: Hanley, Saunders, Kirby, Nelson, Littlejohn, Braddock and Caje. The show opens with our team moving up a hill through cover. Bayonets fixed. (Except, of course, for Saunders who has his Thompson ready). They’re moving in skirmish line toward the skeletal carcass of some destroyed edifice. Machine gun fire sounds. They hit the ground. It’s that big machine gun again, spewing lead by the stream (not near a stream, just like…you know what I mean). Our man on the BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) takes out the machine gunners, but not without garnishing a number of perforations of his own. We see his helmet go tumbling down the hill. When it comes to a stop, we can see that it has a hole in it. Hanley picks it up; it has two holes, through and through—that’s two on both sides. Cut to the opening theme music, cool bayonets and explosions. After the theme, the camera opens on a grave. I’m guessing...