Catching Up

I left off the Day following the World Cup final, won by Italy in a shoot-out, sorrowfully, and concluding the career of France's magnificent Zinedine Zidane, even more sorrowfully, with a red card, awarded for a disgraceful head-butt, thus costing Les Blues the playmaking and leadership that might have made a difference during the second overtime period. Any hopes for a soul-cleansing statement of remorse in the next days were similarly dashed by Zidane's irresponsible adolescent excuses, thus even further souring the taste of this final loss. So it is to the refreshing gardens, honest perspectives, and proud architecture of the Jardin de Luxembourg that one turns for solace and a reminder of greater things in life, and one is not disappointed. The pictures to the right show some of the scenes I enthused about in the previous entry.

Much has happened in the past week plus. To turn to just one event, another sporting spectacle, I drove a couple of hours to the southeast of Paris to Magny-Cours this past weekend to watch the French Formula 1 Grand Prix. This was the 100th anniversary of the first Grand Prix in France. Magny-Cours is not a great circuit, nor is it in a great setting, and the weather was boiling hot. So all the enjoyment lay in the crowd--around 85,000 enthusiastic fans--and in the beauty of the race itself: the scream of powerful, exquisitely tuned engines, the polyphonic crescendo and diminuendo of 21 engines accelerating and braking at different points along the track, and the lovely menace of purring metal charging in low slotted perfection.

Leslie has joined me in Paris as of yesterday. It's great to have her here. I have enjoyed my days here, but I know I will enjoy them much more now. I will hope to report on our doings henceforth as well as to catch up on the many, many experiences and observations of the past month or so that I have not found time to write about.