Mont Saint Michel For Earth Day: Where Nature and Man's Most Ingenious Architecture Meet & Spirits Live

In the television adaptation of this blog, there would be a lovely fade from the illustration in this book page to the real thing, just like the opening of Moonlighting's "Atomic Shakespeare." The drawing is from an essay by Christopher Morely called  "A Sea Shell in Normandy"...

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 Mapeel     4/22/2015     literature, Travel   

"He had every gift but length of years" The Irish Know of What They Speak

"He had every gift but length of years" is from Ted Kennedy's eulogy for his nephew, John Kennedy.  I've always thought the same about my dad, who died thirty years ago today, April 16, 1985. Not as young and tragically as John Kennedy, or his father JFK, but much too young, just as his ...

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 Mapeel     4/16/2015     family, Film, television   

April 14, 1865: Another Shot Heard 'Round the World

 April 14, 2015: 150 years since that Good Friday when Lincoln is shot in the head by an assassin. He will die in the early hours of April 15.  Some thoughts about Spielberg's film from 2012. My Thanksgiving is always tied to three other events, two personal, one national: the birthdays...

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 Mapeel     4/14/2015     Film, Steven Spielberg   

Easter Sunday 2015: And Mad Men's Era Begins Its Descent into TV History

This is not today's table, but a picture of the lovely dining room of the bed & breakfast I stayed in in Antrain, France, for my polyphony workshop. It captures a chic Easter-ness for me, in that effortlessly French kind of way. Happy Easter to all who celebrate (and to the Jews, "nice try"--funny...

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 Mapeel     4/05/2015     holidays, Mad Men, television   

Good Friday, 2015: Pilgrims & Grief of All the Ages

A country road in the small town of Antrain, Brittany, France, a remnant of the path pilgrims used to take to the nearby Mont Saint Michel (much more about that later). The modern-day pilgrims/sightseers take a different route now. But we are all pilgrims of many kinds throughout our life, with many...

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 Mapeel     4/03/2015     England, France, holidays, singing, Travel