StanleyWheeler

  Fun Fact:  Let us cast a glance, or un coup d'oeil , at the French for this bit of history. In 1830, Charles X, King of France, issued the Four Ordinances of St. Cloud. Apparently the king felt that the elected government was too radical (and he had no desire to serve as a mere constitutional monarch, considering the kingship his birthright by divine right and all). These ordinances abolished freedom of the press, dissolved the newly elected Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of the French parliament which contained a majority elected in opposition to the king's policies), reduced the future number of deputies, curtailed the powers of the deputies, and disfranchised a huge portion of the electorate. You might think that such steps would be ill-advised in a nation that had already demonstrated a willingness ride the regicide railway to the bloody end. You would be right.  If Charles X considered the citizens revolting before he issued the ordinances, he gained new insi...

Nature changed her mind. She had written a wonderful spring week with abundant sunshine filling days with the warm supple feel of a baby's smooth cheek. She had brought not only green but striking yellow hues about which bees and assorted other insects turned to and fro in their ecstatic aerial dances. She had a change of heart on Friday. She ferociously rewrote, adding plot complications that included gray skies which brooded in a dark funk above the landscape before lashing out with furious winds and unleashing airborne oceans to remind us that April is a capricious child prone to sudden (and sodden) tantrums. Nature is all about character development. She writes in epic colors with the voice of thunder and tempest without ever forgetting the details that bring her characters to life--and yet she is not nearly so eloquent as the empty tomb. In other words, it was too wet to mow and too wet, windy and rainy to spray the weeds. I did manage to repair a cabinet door and launch in...

Here we are. The new year stretches like an immense scroll of blank paper before us, clean and untouched, disappearing into the ether, awaiting the ink and smudges of our daily struggle. The past year stretches out behind us, bearing the print of our thoughts and actions, stained with spills, strikethroughs, blackouts, tears (and tears), rips, beautiful prose, memories (good and bad), pages upon which we would dwell fondly in our thoughts, and pages we would like to forget. Each day is really such spot upon the great scroll of life; we just give it special significance with the turn of the new year.  The new year is full of promise; we will be better than we have been; we will improve. January begins pregnant with hope and resolution. Before February, most of the hope and all of the resolution expire, stillborn in the face of winter's grim and frigid reality, and our recognition that we would rather embrace our weaknesses than fearlessly forge them into strengths.  We imag...

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 9:00 a.m. We planned to be at the airport by 7:00 a.m. I received a notification before the chickens (or us either for that matter) were up, that the flight from Paris to San Francisco would be delayed... A little later, another notification...and then another...and then another...Anyway, the flight wasn't leaving until sometime in the afternoon. So, we no longer had to hurry. Instead we got to the airport, where we learned the flight wouldn't leave until even later. We spent 5 hours at the airport waiting for the flight. I think my wife took this picture at the airport. When the time to board our flight finally did arrive, my wife and I were pulled from the line and grilled about our backgrounds, jobs, purpose of our trip, etc. I thought there were several other individuals who appeared more deserving of a hasty interrogation...but we were the lucky ones.  I don't know if our answers mattered, or if the procedure was jus...

We left the Louvre, but I wasn't sure about our next move. One part of me wanted to find a nice restaurant in Paris where my last remaining wad of euros might be exchanged for a delicious dinner and memorable evening with my bride. I explained my dilemma. She didn't want to find a restaurant. We took the public transit back to the hotel. We arrived in a blustery storm --if that's not the name of an automobile, it should be. The tempest-- which is a car name -- lashed us with the wet and windy fury of a thousand scourges.  We made out way via the bureaucratic elevator back to our room. We had a brief rest, and perused the area for restaurants; it looked like we would have to take a taxi. The storm had ceased, but there didn't seem to be anything other than hotel restaurants within walking distance. We both agreed that we didn't want to eat at our hotel again. The rather bad experience associated with the meal from the previous evening stuck in our memories like...

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 ...

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...

It was Thursday. We had deviated from the planned 22 steps by skipping the Catacombs earlier, and later going to the Eiffel Tower. Getting back on track with the plan put us at step 13 on our page from the day in the red book which was to take the M12 to Abbesses...except we weren't near the M12 because we had not walked from the Musee d'Orsay to the M6 Assemble National. Instead, and I don't remember the first part of the route, but eventually we took the M2 and got off at Anvers.  My original plan called for us to take the funicular up the slope of Montmartre to Sacre Coeur. It didn't happen that way. From our metro stop, we began walking up the street. The plastic bag that we had received when we had purchased the souvenir shirts (don't ask me what kind of shirts souvenirs wear) had a tendency to make one's arm sweat. We decided to buy a cloth bag in which to carry the shirts. We stopped at a busy shop that sold lots of stuff...lots of stuff that held ...

It was still Thursday. We had just left the souvenir shop near the Pantheon. We were on our way to the Luxembourg Gardens. The sidewalk was pretty wide, wide enough for some shops to have racks of goods out on it. There was also a youth sprawled on the sidewalk. He had two suitcases next to him. The suitcases were red. We gave him a wide berth; there was something hinky about the guy.  I realized what the feeling was when my wife kicked the container, made from the bottom quarter of a clear plastic water bottle, which held a few coins, and which he had placed out in the center of the walk. The container was virtually invisible. She hit it solidly, like an opening kickoff. The bit of bottle went tumbling; the coins went skittering. Did I mention the grate across the sidewalk? Most of the coins went down the grate that was located about six or eight feet from the ambush site.  I found two of his missing coins that the grate had not consumed, both one centime pieces. I could...

It was a Thursday.  According to the red book, we had 22 steps for the day's events. I had constructed the red book before we had left home. Every day had been planned with destinations, addresses, telephone numbers, flight numbers, airports, arrival times, etc, from the departure day of May 11 to the return day of May 19--all tucked into clear plastic page protectors. Each day had a schedule page, subsequent pages contained the documents that we might need for that day. The red book had served us well. At hotels, I had pulled out the reservations previously made online; at the car rental when the girl insisted on asking me every question that I had already answered online, I showed her the page from the red book and everything went smoothly. My advice regarding the red book, in the voice of Karl Malden: Don't leave home without it.  But this was Thursday.  We were going to Paris. We would be at Notre Dame by step 3. Step one consisted of breakfast...and we skipped th...

This was on the wall of our room at the bureaucratic hotel: It's not the exact picture; I found this one on the internet. In fact, I remembering the moon as being bigger. Another thing we found in the room (along with the bottle of water and candy) was a menu. I also found this one on the internet, as I did not consider the menu something of which I wanted a picture when we were there. This picture is too small for me to accurately read. The actual menu that we found in the room suffered from a similar problem--not legibility, but accuracy. We spent some time deciding what we would have. I forget now what we finally decided to have...but it sounded good. When we arrived in the restaurant, we discovered a completely different menu. Apparently, the menu in the room was outdated; the selection upon which we had decided was not to be found on the new menu. We couldn't find anything on the new menu that interested us. Nevertheless, in our famished condition, not having...

The title refers, of course, to the airport, not to the guy after whom the airport is named. We were headed to terminal one. And that sentence reminds me of these lines from ELO's "Here Is The News":  "Ten Eurotechnicians were today sentenced By the justice computer to be banished for life To the prison satellite Penal One..." (The "one" is repeated two more times, as  can be heard here .) Like two hobbits returning a cursed ring, we entered the dark recesses of the terminal--but without the elven cloaks and glowing sword. I saw a sign that said something about the red zone rental car return, and the green zone car return. Naturally, I had no idea which zone I needed to chose. Why was this decision suddenly being thrust upon me? Who were they to insist that I chose a zone? Could I chose to be zone neutral, or elect to be fluid in zone? Apparently not. Sometimes choices are binary.  I made a command decision. I can't remember now whi...

Stairs. We climbed stairs from the parking garage to the main floor of the hotel. The check-in went fairly easily. The trouble arose when I asked about a nearby gas station. The male clerk gave me directions in French, which, although I understood them, I knew that I wasn't going to remember them. I asked if he knew the name of the place. He did not know the name. Our room was several floors up. There was an elevator; it was a bureaucratic elevator. The elevator had a sort of silent Gandalf program. One had to put the room key-card near a sensor to get the elevator to function. Without the room key, it was all, "You shall not pass!" Except it didn't say anything...one was left to push buttons without result. Even a simple, "What are you doing, Dave?" would have been preferable to the stubborn silence of the infernal machine. Frequently (i.e., every time), the sensor didn't read the key-card even after several Jedi-like motions with the card. The eye of...