All winter. So little to do. So little human interaction.

Plenty of work though, PLENTY! My raison d’être.

I used to see people. Go out with friends. Do other things.

Thursday night, I had dinner with my-mentor-and-great Allen Ahearn’s wife, daughter and son-in-law at Founding Farmers. They serve a great cornbread in a small black cast-iron skillet or “spider.” It was wonderful to catch up on the families and memories. Strange, it has been just over a year since he passed. It seems so long. Sadly, we were estranged until his last year. COVID.

Friday was perhaps my last visit to Lorien. It is being put back on the market due to unforeseen circumstances. The owners wanted me to visit one last time before the final cleanup and polish for buyers’ visits. The place is beautiful. They’ve done so much to the house and property. It was a bittersweet evening. My New Market Plains Winery friends were there as well. A lavish spread was put out—including saltenas—the Bolivian version of empanadas. Before we settled in, I took a lone walk around the grounds.

Some of the stress melted away, but melancholy is not a good replacement. I miss those years. A “Golden Age.”

“Barbara? Is that you?”

Monday, April 13th

I think I broke some kind of record over the weekend.

Where did all of these boxes come from?

I’m leaving for France tonight. I’ve prepared things at work, I think. I’ve done nothing at home.

Well, I have started taking some plants outside. If I go to the door and have a free hand, a potted plant goes with me.

Spring is here! No more freezes, I think. I started with the spent amaryllis. They looked so dreary in the bay window. Blah-bare bulbs with blah-green fronds just starting to rise. The ugly blah-green stumps where I cut the flower stalks.

When I got home Sunday evening, there were some things I wanted to do outside. I also wanted to hear the end of the Masters Golf Championship. My TV isn’t working. The roofers moved the satellite. I left the truck running with the radio on loud and the four doors open. The trilliums are up.

One colony is being invaded by bleeding hearts. They thrive up here and have self-propagated prodigiously. The trilliums are fragile. I had to surgically extricate 8 or 10 bleeding hearts. Some looked like they could survive, so they were walked down the driveway to the new Angle Garden I put in last fall. I heeled them in there. Looking at the weather forecast—no rain in the foreseeable future. Back up the steep slope. Back down with a watering can.

The tournament’s ending was thrilling. I miss golf sometimes. The camaraderie and long walks.

Monday morning. Time to start packing. I didn’t have time to prepare. I went digging through the closet for appropriate clothes. Giles could sense something was up. He lay prostrate on the floor, watching me balefully. I put out some sliced pork roast. He ignored it.

I made a mental list. Do I have everything?

Chargers, meds, toiletries…

The water heater and well pump were switched off. Alarms set.

Do I have everything?

The first stop was the boarding kennel. Giles. I pulled his leash to urge him out of the truck.

Hey looked at me balefully. “I know what you’re doing. You’re abandoning me.”

On the ground, he was immediately enthralled with all the dog smells on the grass. He forgot that I exist.

Back to work.

I’d really pushed over the weekend. I especially wanted to free up as many carts as I could to make things easier for everybody while I was gone.

I checked in on all the big orders queued for processing.

There was plenty of time. My flight wasn’t til 9:15. The travel agent said to get to Dulles 3 hours early.

I decided to call AT&T and make sure my phone would work overseas. It has for many years been automatic. When I land, I get a notice. “You have international calling…”

A couple of years ago after I’d gotten a new phone, it didn’t. It was a nightmare. Hours were wasted as I called and waited using the hotel’s Wi-Fi.

This call went down so many rabbit holes. When I finally got a human, I had one question. He took me down all kinds of options I had no interest in.

“I just want to know if my phone will work in France.”

Finally, I was able to disconnect.

Plenty of time. What should I get into next?

The conference room table was mostly cleared. (A rarity.) I double-checked. Passport, Euros, power converter, chargers (4 or 5)…

I looked at the flight reservation:

“Flight 915… departs 6:00 p.m.”

!!!

It was 3 p.m. 1 hour to Dulles if I’m lucky. That leaves 2 to get through security.

“Idiot!”

I rushed out to the car and sped off.

“Do I have everything?”

About halfway there, I noticed my EZPass was not attached to my windshield.

“Stolen? Another problem to solve. Does the Dulles access road still take credit cards? There haven’t been human toll collectors for many years.”

The final exit is for Dulles Airport. I took the far-right lane, credit card in hand. When I got to the machine, the gate flew up, and a sign flashed, “PAID!”

“Is the EZPass in the car somewhere?”

When I parked (on the roof of the parking deck), I quickly looked around the front of the car. There was the pass—a little white plastic box—under the passenger seat. It must have popped off in the winter.

When the plane landed about 7 a.m. Monday, I was a bleary-eyed wreck. I slipped out between my two rather large seatmates like an anchovy squeezed out of a packed-too-tight tin.

To find the Uber pickup zone, I had to walk halfway around DeGaulle Airport.

The ride in was extremely long—over 2 hours for a 20-mile ride. Rush hour and accidents were the cause.

Of course, my room wasn’t ready that early. I was given coffee in a little stainless pot to pour into a stylish porcelain cup. While I gathered strength and fortitude, I took a look at a map and my phone.

The Jardin des Plantes was only a ten-minute walk. And I could cross the Seine.

I always find it an iconic experience to walk across a great river. In Egypt, my driver and guide both looked at me strangely when I asked to be dropped off on the east side of the Nile and to meet me on the west.

I mean, pharaohs never walked across the Nile, but I could!

My exhausted mind thought I might sit on a bench in the botanical gardens and write something. So, I slung my knapsack over my shoulder and walked across the river and into the gardens. It is spring, and the horse chestnuts—marronniers—are in bloom everywhere in the city. Marronniers are not edible. When I was a kid in Amherst near Buffalo, we would gather horse chestnuts. They are beautiful—like polished stained wood. We would punch a hole through them and thread a shoelace through the hole. There was a double or triple knot tied at the end of the lace so the nut could not slide off. One kid would hold his shoelace up—the nut dangling in the air. The other kid would wrap his lace around his hand. He would swing his nut at the dangling nut, trying to bang into it.

Then it was the other kid’s turn. We would bang each other’s nuts until one broke and fell off the shoelace. It was great fun. Some nuts that survived many battles could be retired in glory to my cigar box of collectibles—like bottle caps.

Back to Paris 2026. Pink and white blooming chestnuts are everywhere. I must return in the fall and discover what they do with the nuts. In my childhood, they would gather in the streets—falling onto the road and rolling to the gutter.

When I got to the gardens, it was too beautiful. Tulip beds were in bloom. Off to the right were signs, “Menagerie.”

I couldn’t resist. So, into the zoo went I. In some ways, the zoo was disappointing. 80-90% of the animals were sleeping or hiding out of view.

Still, it was surprising and… inspiring to see an orangutan.

My friend Chris—now on the last leg of his two-month solo trip around the world—called the Monday morning while I was in a panic packing for this trip.

“Hey! I’m in Seoul. What are you up to?”

…

“How were the orangutans?” I asked. He had told me that was part of the trip.

“It was so strange. I was alone on a huge riverboat. Just my guide, the skipper and a couple crew. It took a couple days to get to them. On the way, we passed hundreds of proboscis monkeys. When we ate, we had to put up curtains so the monkeys couldn’t see us with food…”

Now THAT’s an adventurous traveler!

After a couple of hours in the zoo and gardens, I saw it would still be unlikely my room would be ready. Notre Dame was not too far a walk. Down along the Seine, across the bridge, and there it was. When I was here in 2024, it was closed. There were rustic wooden bleachers erected in front of it so you could sit and… look at the facade. When I was here in 2019, it burned the morning I was in the airport. I had visited the night before.

• April 15, 2019 in Paris.
• April 15, 2020 perhaps the darkest times of COVID madness.
• April 15, 2021 my brother Tony died hours after I arrived in San Francisco.
• June 12, 2024 back to Paris.
• April 14, 2026 I joined the line to enter the replicated Notre Dame.

Amazing.

I sought out some of the spots I love best. There they were. Not looking like they’d been through a conflagration—but rather aged gracefully with centuries of patina somehow layered on even the new construction.

Then I could walk back to the hotel.

A long, long day. But it wasn’t done!

A friend of a friend wanted to meet me. The blogs… An ex-pat doctor living in Brittany. This was her only evening available. She scheduled dinner in Montparnasse.

I was running on fumes. Or batteries. Or battery fumes… when the Uber dropped me off at La Coupole.

Ahead on the sidewalk, the only thing I saw was a beautiful billowing cloud of blonde hair. Is that her? No one else was on the broad sidewalk.

“Hello?”

She turned, and I was struck. Unlike being hit by that big bike in Amsterdam, I kept my feet on this sidewalk.

In we went. The restaurant is sprawling. Very Belle Epoque.

“Am I in a movie? Midnight in Paris II?”

She speaks like a native. Well, she is a native now. A life in two worlds. The second one now in France. I live in two worlds too. Wonder World of Books and Hermit Land in the Wilderness.

She exchanged pleasantries with the maitre’d and indicated where she wanted the table. I stood there like a log.

We sat across from one another at the table for two, and the evening began.

Cocktail?

Sure. (But only one. I don’t want to make a bad impression by toppling face-first into the soup.)

I had “a gin martini up very dry.” Of course, they made it just right. Not many do outside the US. Not many do IN the US.

I couldn’t translate what she ordered, but it looked fascinating.

The menu was an epic poem. Every line was full of meaning and imagery. It was all in French, and what I couldn’t translate, I parsed. What wasn’t parsable, I guessed at…

“Do you like oysters?”

They had a dozen varieties to choose from.

“Do you mind choosing? I can’t make any recommendations. I don’t recognize any of these varieties.”

They came out in a tray of ice and were placed atop a wire stand.

(I knew it was tacky to take pictures. I think I mentioned that to her. But that didn’t stop me. They were for posterity.)

We talked about this and that.

Occasionally, frequently, I would have to disengage and turn toward the large window wall looking out onto the street. Though the scene outside was other vintage brasseries and silhouettes of passing pedestrians, I felt I could connect with reality in the real world out there. I needed periodic grounding.

“What would you like to order?”

‘Everything,’ I thought. ‘Or I could close my eyes and press my forefinger anywhere on the carte and be pleasantly surprised.’

“What do you recommend?”

The choices were like diamonds in the sky. All were perfect and glittering. Choosing anyone would insult the others.

These are just some of the entrees. There are starters and a separate page of shellfish. (I think demi-tourteau is a crab cake?)

Among the first artists and intellectuals to adopt La Coupole as their regular haunt were Jean Cocteau, Alberto Giacometti, Joséphine Baker, Man Ray, Georges Braque and Brassaï. Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet met there in 1928. In the 1930s, aficionados of La Coupole were Pablo Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Sonia Delaunay, André Malraux, Jacques Prévert, Marc Chagall, Édith Piaf among many others. In the 1940s and 1950s La Coupole was frequented by Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Marlene Dietrich, and Ava Gardner. After the Second World War, Yves Klein dined there almost every evening and held judo sessions on the terrace.

I couldn’t make it obvious that I was dithering.

“Do you mind choosing?”

…no…

“The wine?”

“Do you mind choosing?”

Amongst twenty other syllables I heard, “Sancerre.”

“I love Sancerre,” I said.

The waitstaff was impeccable. That is another culture here. Were they all male? They often are—or were. Gone are the stereotypes of the surly gruff I’ll-ignore-you-til-I’m-ready French waiters. (I think. I haven’t seen one in a long time.)

All were dressed in black and white. Some in vests. Some in jackets. Does that denote rank?

My choice came out and was “presented.” Dover Sole Meunier. Appropriate since the Channel isn’t many miles away. He took it a few feet away to debone and dress it.

Sublime.

Things got fuzzy then. Not from alcohol, but from the time sojourned in this wonderland. Maybe it is time to get my eyes fixed. My doctor said, “You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

Again, I disengaged and looked outside. Just to be sure there was a real world out there.

If Chagall and Picasso and Piaf had sidled up and started speaking with my partner, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

As Man Ray said in Midnight in Paris, “It makes perfect sense! You live in two worlds.”

“Would you like anything else?”

“I’d better not,” I said. What I thought was, ‘Let’s start at the first line, and do it all again…’

For some reason, a dessert appeared. It was warm chocolate drizzled over a pear and ice cream. I must have said, “Belle Helene.”

Sigh…

She politely asked if I wanted to go out for a nightcap. Somewhere, I had the sense that Charles-the-Babbling-Brook would appear, replacing “Mr Hyde.” That monster could begin trying to speak French.

I gave profound thanks to her (and to my Maker.)

I was able to order an Uber.

The Uber found the hotel.

I found the lobby.

The elevator door wouldn’t open after several tugs.

“Must be a security thing.”

I waved my key card at it to no avail. Then it occurred to me the car wasn’t on the lobby floor. If the antique wire cage surrounding the shaft had opened, I could have stepped into the void.

I pushed the button, and the machinery started groaning.

I found my room.

I found my bed.

It is 2 a.m. in Paris. My internal clock is all screwed up. It is Wednesday here. Tuesday at home.

Mind and body are scrambled, likely scrambled together as well as just scrambled.

I didn’t sleep on Saturday because of the stress and overwork.

Nor did I sleep on Sunday much, much for the same reason.

I figure I slept two fitful hours on the plane from Dulles direct to Paris. My travel agent got me seats late. I was supposed to go to Egypt this week, but the war canceled that tour. Why did I decide on France? This tour has an interesting itinerary.

Long ago, I was a fan of Peter Mayle. He was a Brit who moved to France. He wrote about it in a very engaging way.

In the 90s, it was Frances Mayes who fled a bad divorce to live in Tuscany.

Another, greater writer—on travel, living in other countries and cuisine, MFK Fisher, captivated me about the same time. I wrote about that romantic attachment here in July 2018.

I didn’t keep the Mayle or Mayes books. (You can’t keep everything, and you can find their books for a dime a dozen.) But Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher is different. I have many of her books—including fine press limited editions and signed copies—in my permanent collection. I treasure the LEC limited edition signed by her of Brillat-Savarin‘s The Physiology of Taste

I haven’t sprung for this fancy thing offered by my friend, Laurelle Swan.

Yet Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme; Fisher, M.F.K. (Translation, Notes); Thiebaud, Wayne (Artist)

The Physiology of Taste; or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy

San Francisco: The Arion Press, 1994. Thiebaud, Wayne. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Folio size (13 3/4″ by 10 1/4″), 356 pages plus 18 unnumbered pages for the prints (374 pages total). The text is Neo Didot, in Monotype composition by Mackenzie & Harris. The display type is Bodoni Bold, handset in foundry type. The drawings were printed by letterpress from photopolymer plates. The paper is French mould-made Lana Royale; a heavier weight of the same paper is used for the lithographs. The binding, done in-house, is hand-sewn, in full blue-gray cloth, with black titling on the front and spine, and a drawing by Thiebaud across the bottom. The slipcase is covered in the same cloth with titling and a vignette on the spine. The color prints, binding cloth, and slipcase were printed lithographically. Edition of 200 copies, plus 26 lettered copies hors de commerce, signed by the artist. New. Item #CNAP044a

M.F.K. Fisher (1908-1992) contributed an introduction to the second Arion Press book, “A Commonplace Book of Cookery”, in 1975, but died before we were able to pay tribute to her by publishing her first major literary work, a translation of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s (1755-1826) famous gastronomic essays. This book, originally made for hire in 1948 for the Limited Editions Club, formed her as an author on subjects relating to food, wine, dining, and living well in the largest sense.

She became a good friend of the Press, extending invitations to “the crew” to come to her home in St. Helena for a hike and a swim, followed by lunch, where the conversation was always lively, but never about food.

The artist Wayne Thiebaud delivered to Hoyem a large pile of original ink drawings and told him to use what he wanted. Hoyem made photocopies of the drawings and sorted and combined them as he saw fit and Thiebaud immediately approved the selection. He also made the nine lithographs in color, and drew a design for the cover of the binding that showed the skills he learned as a commercial graphic artist. A trade edition was published by Counterpoint in 1996… $8500.00.

Yet…

My last visit to Paris, I made a pilgrimage to the grave of Brillat-Savarin at Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

Anyway, those writers and others have tempted me over the decades. Their tales of living and writing and eating in Europe—the stuff dreams are made of.

Imagine the bravery and boldness and creativity of recrossing the Atlantic to live in the Old Country…

And here I am writing about food in France.

The room was bright when I awoke.

“What time is it?”

8:43.

How wonderful. A long sleep unbroken by dogs wheezing, worries waking, needs pushing.

It is Wednesday. Moments ago, it was Sunday evening, and I was lighting a fire in the cast-iron woodstove, wondering how I could possibly make it through Monday’s trials.

“Can I pack for a trip?” As in “am I able?”

Well, here I am.

I must rise from the cotton cloud and go to the Musee Orsay at noon. The Louvre at 4. And wherever my feet take me between and after.

My Museum Pass—a great bargain—requires timed reservations for a few of the most popular sites. I found the dedicated entrance and breezed in—no line. No charge.

When I got inside and surveyed the place, I had to remind myself, “Breathe!”

Escalator after escalator after… and then I was on the top floor where all the Impressionists and their forebears and successors are galleried.

I wandered through Cezanne, Monet, Van Gogh…

I was facing Proust when a text buzzed silently in my pocket.

“Can we buy 8 pallets?” [of our culls]

Maybe 8000 books. All profit but for the labor—which would need to be done anyway.

“Of course.”

I am making a book deal in a museum in Paris.

I reach across the ocean to arrange it.

An hour later as I was walking in the Tuileries, “Can we get 8 more?” buzzed in my pocket.

“Of course.”

Then it was time for the Louvre. I breezed in with my pass.

Miles and miles of galleries. It is impossible not to get lost.

I took an oblique peek at La Joconde.

The Moulin Triptych was alive with color and personality.

It was a couple of hours later that I left.

Hungry—I hadn’t eaten since last night—I headed for Au Pied de Cochon. The Pig’s Foot.

At a table on the sidewalk with hundreds passing by a few feet away, I gave free rein to dinner.

Duck foie gras, terrine and razor clams in butter. It was heavenly and rich.

Healthy thinking had me walking back to the hotel. I plugged in the hotel, and my feet kept moving. I turned when the woman in my pocket instructed me to.

“You have arrived.”

No. It was the restaurant Camille, not the Hotel Camille. I hadn’t gone too far awry, and after 22,000 steps, I was back in bed.

Thursday evening

The week has been such a blur.

I can’t escape bookselling.

When I looked at my phone this morning, there was an email asking for yet another truckload of store pulls. There is a deadline, so I had to act on it this morning. Of course, “this morning” in Maryland is 6 hours later than in Paris. So, I sent emails to managers to be sure they got an early start.

After a late breakfast, I headed up to Victor Hugo‘s house in the Place des Vosges.

Hugo is not a writer I’ve delved into much. My loss. I read Les Mis long ago (didn’t really find the musical to be as earth-shattering as many.) The Hunchback—though, sadly, most of my memory is of the Disney cartoon, which I enjoyed with my kids (over and over.) That was before Disney films became so political, and I stopped bringing them home from the video part of Wonder Book.

But he is a giant in French culture. Not just as a writer, but as a politician and philosopher. He was a vigorous opponent of slavery. He rebelled against Napoleon III’s government and self-exiled himself to the Channel Islands for many years. This museum also shows his talent as a designer and artist.

Where did he find so much time to write so many words and still create fascinating arts and crafts? His home decor, he meticulously dreamed and created on paper and then realized in fact. His rooms are lovely—like early versions of William Morris et al. He even painted many of the frames in which his art is showcased.

His museum barely touched on the womanizing he practiced his whole life.

Pepysian. Boswellian.

Hugo gave free rein to his libido until a few weeks before his death. He sought a wide variety of women of all ages, be they courtesans, actresses, prostitutes, admirers, servants or revolutionaries like Louise Michel for sexual activity. He systematically reported his casual affairs using his own code, as Samuel Pepys did, to make sure they would remain secret. For instance, he resorted to Latin abbreviations (osc. for kisses) or to Spanish (Misma. Mismas cosas: The same. Same things). Homophones are frequent: Seins (Breasts) becomes Saint; Poële (Stove) actually refers to Poils (Pubic hair). Analogy also enabled him to conceal the real meaning: A woman’s Suisses (Swiss) are her breasts—because Switzerland is renowned for its milk. After a rendezvous with a young woman named Laetitia he would write Joie (Happiness) in his diary. If he added t.n. (toute nue) he meant she stripped naked in front of him. The initials S.B. discovered in November 1875 may refer to Sarah Bernhardt.

Wikipedia

This, in addition to a wife and family and a lifelong mistress who followed him to Guernsey.

Where did he find the time?

He suffered family tragedies. All but one of his children predeceased him. (She was in an insane asylum.)

And he was a hoarder—for comfort and inspiration.

If that’s a sign of genius, there’s hope for me.

Genius…

From there, it was a short walk to the Paris History Museum: Carnavalet.

It was just serendipity that I passed by it while meandering in eastern Paris on my way to my hotel. Usually, I’d skip something as “local” as this. But it has a beautiful cafe in its courtyard (Joli), and it is free—so why not?

It was amazing. It was three hours in a sprawling palace. From stones and bones of prehistoric humans in the crypt-like basement, through the Roman era up until recent times. In between all this, there is artwork like the Mucha design for a jewelry store.

David paintings. Signage from the Chat Noir.

Gertrude Stein’s desk.

(Imagine what that table was witness to.)

All manner of artifacts of Louis and Marie Antoinette’s imprisonment and beheadings.

These earrings are from the 1880s. Souvenirs depicting the loose heads of the king and queen.

Napoleon’s ascension. WW I and WW II.

A souvenir block from the Bastille—which was dismantled stone by stone from July 14, 1789 until July 14, 1790.

The history of that building from the 14th century to the end of the 18th is fascinating. Henry V of England captured it in 1420. He used it as a prison during his tenure.

So many kings over centuries. One prison for their enemies.

(My birthday is on Bastille Day—please don’t send anything extravagant.)

It was an immersion in French history and really put together a lot of things for me. Tumultuous…

From there, I walked to the Picasso Museum. I visited that in 2024 but was drawn to it again. Yet another sprawling palace museum, it is home to much of Picasso’s personal art collection. (I think the state took it in lieu of death taxes.)

Floor after floor. Gallery after gallery. Period after period. Media after media.

There are even examples of his poetry. (Who knew?)

I admire his work ethic. He painted until 3 a.m. the day he died at age 91.

If you read the last Paris stories, you know I was (and am) addicted to movie Midnight in Paris. From the night I unsuspectingly stuck the DVD in early in COVID I was “hook—ed.” If you have seen it, you know I laughed when I saw this one.

It wasn’t too long a walk back to the hotel. The route took me through the Place de Bastille—now a very busy traffic circle with the tall monument to liberty in the center.

I continued along the Bassin de l’Arsenal.

(That’s the Bastille monument at the top of the image.)

Yet another stunningly beautiful feature of this city that I only discovered by wandering. (Plus a hint from my dinner companion on Tuesday night.)

Friday, I change hotels, and my “guided” tour begins. I can’t imagine how much French I’ll learn in the days that follow.