Delightful reads this summer break

  Who wouldn't want to have a Bruno around?

Mystery, Food and the Perigord

A traveller's hilarious companion: 

Remembering Maeve Binchy in 2022 

Homebound: Day 10

With eyebrow pencils and acrylic:

     

The Summer Book: A superb performance by Glenn Close at 79

 

Available on Kanopy for CPL card holders. 

Filmed in the Finnish archipelago.

Bienvenue à Paris!

Bienvenue à Paris!
Attention aux arnaques et aux pickpockets.
So, tiny as a mouse you make yourself
As with a purpose, you walk quicker!
Dodging dog poop on the way to Tour Eiffel.
(How about mentioning Maurice Koechlin,
Émile Nouguier and Stephen Sauvestre?)

At Place du Trocadero, you’re a graffiti reader
Amidst the calls of early morning hawkers
With China-made souvenir items on blankets,
Easily folded up when patrol cars appear.

They say in La Seine you can still swim!
It’s choking with boats up to Ile Saint-Louis,
Revealing sleepers under stone bridges.
On its banks, the Bouquinistes do business.

In massive crowds, you easily blend
At Musée du Louvre and Opéra Garnier.
In the Pantheon, you pay your respects to Victor
Thank him for his Jean Valjean and Quasimodo.

Arc de Triomphe stands tall on Champs-Elysées.
284 steps? No, thanks. On the Big Bus you stay.
The Assemblee Nationale has rainbow-colored steps.
Just as grand are Musée d’Orsay and Place de la Madeleine.

Second-hand smoke you breathe
As you hike, stopping at toilettes.
Tour Montparnasse, you climb.
Jardin du Luxembourg, a pretty sight.

You trek Av. De Suffren, Rue du Laos, Rue de Vougirard,
Rue de la Convention. Thankful for shops and restaurants.
Boulangeries et pâtisseries for breads and desserts,
Les Saveurs de Shanghai for your noodles.

There’s Biocoop Convention for your daily banana.
When missing USA, there’s KFC and McDonalds.
Lebanese, Vietnamese, Indian, Italian, Korean, Japanese,
You name it. It’s your Paris culinary experience.

On the 21st, Pope Francis leaves.
At Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris,
You queue with the faithful in the rain
And send him off with teary angels.
Bienvenue à Paris!
MLJ/24042025/SoakingWetInParis

Circular Economy

 

Circular Economy

Things You’ve Kept

Did you really think you’d have a gallery,
Display what you’ve gathered from antiquity?
Forgetting paper goes yellow and crisp,
Inviting cockroaches, termites and silverfish?
But what the heck?

You give them one last look before shredding:
Your first tickets to fly, passes for boarding,
Cathay Pacific, Air Moldova, Aeroflot.
Passes for hotels, museums, tours,
And it all comes back to you.

The chilly Easter weekend walk in Odesa,
The Black Sea seashells you still have,
Beachcomber that you are. The comedy

At the Opera Theatre. 192 steps up Potemkin Stairs!  

The creaky windows of dimly-lit Dracula’s Castle,
The red clay tiles of Medieval Brasov. How picturesque!
The grandeur and natural beauty of the Carpathians,
The children’s laughter at the Council Square fountain.

The scent of Egyptian mummies in Budapest Museum
Fine wines and horses in Puszta. The tranquility of the Danube.
Tour guide Anne, whose English teacher in the 40s was a Pinoy,
Sharing he mustn’t be missed at home for they were a dozen boys!

Gently-rolling tumbleweeds on the way to Hisarlık
Western movie tracks playing in your sleepy head.
The biting wind, piercing through your cheeks
Like punishment for the ruins of Troy under your feet.

Sweet Turkish delights in the Grand Bazaar,
Not to forget: “Don’t touch if you’re not going to buy!”
The blue Iznik tiles of the grand Blue Mosque,
Maps, travel guides, phrasebooks, postcards, pictures,
Lehman’s instructions, a Turkish friend:
“Never take a cab. Walk to this otel instead.”

Thirty years after. Did you ever think
Of digitization? Gone are paper and ink?
Papers unrecognizable by a swipe generation?
Yes, you did. For you slowly transitioned
From film to digital cameras, from negatives to CD copies,
Then from CDs and memory sticks to cloud storage.

What else is to come when you have so little left?
Oh, well… Just keep your papers and reminisce
When you get to 100 with arthritic fingers,
Unable to scroll and swipe on a piece of tech!
MLJ/25/07/2025/ShredEmAll

When will we stop funding billionaires?

 

How I Boycott Billionaire Companies

Good Reads

 

Winnetou

 Winnetou, The Immortal: Germany’s Complicated Love Affair With Native American Lore

Under Bridges

Thank God for bridges
For underneath we find shelter
From the storm, from domestic violence,
From PTSD, from judgmental society.
The shaking and rattling above,
Like music to our ears.
The scent of the river,
Like the call of home
Pasig River, Elbow River,
Bow River, Seine River
Therein our kitchen, our bathroom.

Snuggle with me in my tent
And dream the night away.
24/04/2025/RiverSeine

There Was an Old Lady

There was an old lady
No, she didn’t live in a shoe
Nor did she swallow a fly,
But she looked like the Pigeon Lady
In Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone 2
Except that she had cats
Two cats that sat with her
Day and night on their cardboard mat
Across from the grand Palais Garnier
Possibly getting sick of the sounds
Of opulent operas and ballets
But safe from falling chandeliers.

There was an old lady
Under the gaze of Apollo and Pegasus
And other famed giants and spectators.
Her placard for monsieur et mademoiselle
Nobody wants to read or have time to read
For they’re in awe of the greatest of the greats,
Entranced still when they step out of the theatre
With The Phantom or Romeo and Juliet
Still luxuriously ringing in their ears.
24/04/2025/OperaNationalDeParis

Homelessfonts.org

 The homeless people's handwritten signs no one wants to read...

Sweet!

A dear friend gave you ice wine.
What to do?
Get a corkscrew,
A new addition to your utensil drawer
You’ve been trying to empty
As you prep for retirement.

You got tomatoes on sale.
What to do?
Turn them into spaghetti sauce.
You got garlic and bacon on sale.
What to do?
Garnish your sauce.

So what’s for new year’s eve?
Whole wheat spaghetti, ice wine
Reminiscent of your once expat life
When friends came with flowers,
Moldovan chocolates and wines.
Retirement is sweet!
MLJ/30/12/2024/LifeIsSweet

David Attenborough

 Ant Mountain

Looking After Our Elders

 A multigenerational longhouse in Derbyshire

Grand Designs

Mike and Sarah wanted a multigenerational and energy-efficient longhouse they would share with their octogenarian parents and adult daughters. They believe that children should care for their parents when they can. Their vision was turned into reality through Grand Designs. Now they have peace of mind having their parents around.

This reminds me of a friend's compound where the main house used to be shared with her brother and their mother and single aunt while their father worked abroad. It remained everyone’s home when her brother got married and had six children which my single friend helped send to college. One by one, these children had their own families and built their own homes with everyone’s help on this ancestral land. DIY construction, that is. The remaining ground in the middle retained its smooth, concrete-like texture as children’s feet from many generations past had played games on it using rubber slippers, empty cans, sticks, and marbles, long before the digital age.  

In this intergenerational abode, it’s not infrequent to see a child walking to the main house with a bowl of freshly cooked meal to share with their grandma, great aunt, and great-great aunt. One’s “specialty” food, in particular, ought to be shared with everyone, and profuse thanks and compliments follow. This specialty becomes the expected dish during regular potlucks on special holidays and gatherings such as Christmas and New Year where the aroma of a suckling pig being roasted wafts in the air all day. The made-up “rotisserie” is manned by two or more topless male adults as they drink the local beer and take turns turning the poor piglet on a bamboo culm with its limbs tied tight, making it appear like it’s holding on to the bamboo so as not to fall into the fire pit dug on the ground. Before dawn, the squeals of this pig reverberated in the air and signaled to everyone in town that it was time to get up and start all the peeling, chopping, and cooking that should be done for the Noche Buena, or Christmas Eve feast, which every family enjoys after the midnight mass. After Noche Buena, my friend who loves to play Santa Claus gathers all the children around the Christmas tree and hands out their presents. Every year, she happily starts shopping when the “-ber” months come (September, October, November & December) and checks off the names of nephews and nieces on her list, and later their children, making sure that everyone happily goes home with something.  

On this family compound, when a child or an adult falls sick, an aunt, the great aunt, the grandma, or the great grandma is usually there to lend a hand, helping care for the sick or looking after the family if one is in hospital. They bring their usual home remedies such as Vicks VapoRub and liniment oil, and of course, hot soup. From their kitchen or garden, there are also medicinal plants such as ginger and guava whose preparations and benefits are known to the local population. In this clan, there doesn’t seem to be a lack of traditional knowledge and caring hands.

These caring hands seem to be in short supply now, especially in places where adults work in shifts or multiple jobs, children are left in the care of older siblings or in front of screens, minimum wage is never enough, inflation is constant, politics and economy are unstable, and the elderly are left to fend for themselves. MLJ/18/08/2024

Paris Olympic Games 2024 Opening Ceremony on the Seine

 

Commentator 1: Over the top!
Commentator 2: Beautifully-orchestrated chaos!

Truly. What do we expect from Paris? While the Phantom weaves through the city streets, subway, sewer, the Louvre, and rooftops with the torch and dancers stomp on water while others did acrobatics from the Notre Dame Cathedral scaffolding, a soprano sings and followed by artists from all other genres, models walk on the bridge… and the flotilla goes by. Lady Gaga starts and Celine Dion ends amidst stunning lights, sounds and sights that’s definitely Parisian. Heaven blesses the Parade of Nations with rain. What else could we ask for? MLJ/26/07/2024/MagnificentParis

(Photo: Associated Press)

Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny (1976-2024)

 

When hope is gone...

The Solutrean - the peak of stone tools workmanship

I will never be able to put up all the photos I have taken, each photo needs a lot of research, typically, to put it in context on the site. I do not have enough time left, life is short and death is long, but I am going to give it a good shot!

Life has been kind to me, I want for nothing, and am in good health. Not many in the world are as lucky as I am, and I am grateful for my good fortune.

My best wishes to all who read and enjoy the pages of my site. - Don Hitchcock - 

https://www.donsmaps.com/solutrean.html

With the recent discovery of Solutrean tools in the East Coast, can we assume that the first peoples of North America crossed the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Bering Strait? Or maybe both routes were used? MLJ/16/09/2023

https://www.donsmaps.com/solutrean.html

What We Leave Behind

Easter 1996: Odessa, Ukraine
From a stroll at the Black Sea, we trudged
Up Potemkin Stairs while one talked about
Battleship Potemkin between huffs.

At the top we were greeted
By Governor Richelieu in bronze.
Up north: Vorontsov Palace colonnade
Inscribed with lots of “… was here,”
So tempting to add “Lina was here,”
But I dared not leave that behind.

Summer 2023: Bow River, Alberta
Graffiti on concrete at Carburn Park,
Messages on bridges and rocks:
“Daddy loves you.”
“Zach was the killer.”
“Be kind. God loves us.”

A red cap, mismatched shoes at Pearce Estate,
Infant socks, a lone sandal at Edworthy Park,
Clothes, empty water bottles, empty cans,
Scattered rocks stained from fire
Likely for cooking last night’s dinner
For trout’s in the River all year.

Bow River is low but is home in summer,
As welcoming as parks and forests.
Who wouldn’t want to flow along,
Live for a season or two, leave for winter
Along with wintering feathered friends,
And leave what we leave?
MLJ/13/08/2023/ByTheBowRiver