posted by Charles H. Russo on Oct 22
Posted in About Paris
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posted by Charles H. Russo on Oct 21
Buying the newspaper, man wearing a kilt, Wye, England. Photo by David Holmes.
Hooray, it’s Sunday, with plenty of time to read newspapers and books and do whatever else you like! This afternoon, I’m baking a honey pound cake, from the October Country Living magazine, sent by my lovely friend Vanessa. Then I’ll descend into the cave (wine cellar) to search yet again for a bag of important documents ( Saturday’s search proved futile). And what an overwhelming task it is!
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posted by Charles H. Russo on Oct 20
Per the Sunday Scribblings prompt, “My first act as queen will be…”
Two leaders currently batting about inflammatory talk of “World War III:”
I’d have them stand
face-to-face,
those war-mongering
blustering fools
always threatening
to blow each other up,
yet hiding behind rhetoric
that fuels the fire.
A certain “relevant” president:
Sit down for a chat
with the residents of New Orleans
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posted by Charles H. Russo on Oct 19
(And hooray for Christopher Dodd, who’s put a “hold” on the bill giving immunity to telecoms!)
“While the President may think that it’s right to offer immunity to those who break the law and violate the right to privacy of thousands of law-abiding Americans, I want to assure him it is not a value we have in common and I hope the same can be said of my fellow Democrats in the Senate. For too long we have failed to respect the rule of law and failed to protect our fundamental civil liberties. I will do what I can to see to it that no telecommunications giant that was complicit in this Administration’s assault on the Constitution is given a get-out-of-jail-free card.” - Sen. Christopher Dodd
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posted by Charles H. Russo on Oct 19
Anyone who knows me knows that I am an enormous fan of Audrey Hepburn. I
posted by Charles H. Russo on Oct 19
Anyone who knows me knows that I am an enormous fan of Audrey Hepburn. I’ve loved her ever since I was a little girl and my mom let me stay at home from school one afternoon because they were showing Breakfast at Tiffany’s on the “3:00 Movie” (right after “Love, American Style“- hey, I haven’t thought about that in ages!!) Anyway, you can imagine how thrilled I was yesterday to meet Mr. Hubert de Givenchy at a lunch reception that I helped to organize at the Mona Bismarck Foundation. He was so charming and debonnaire- as only a friend and confidant of Audrey’s could be. I can’t tell you what we said to each other, although I’m sure we must have exchanged 2 or 3 sentences each. Unfortunately, I am one of those people that starts chatting insanely when they get nervous (lucky for me I’m usually as cool as a cucumber). PLUS, I have this weird social- Tourette’s thing: Whenever I know I’m not supposed to say something, I have this crazy compulsion to say it anyway (like the time I said a teensy swear word during a job interview, or the time I was in a restaurant and told the woman at the table next to ours that she had spinach in her teeth- that kind of stuff.) Anyway, as I was speaking with Mr Givenchy, it took all my earthly power not to say, “Hand me my lipstick, dahling!” so I just clammed up, which was probably the wisest thing to do, because in this photo I think I see just the tiniest daub of mustard on Mr Givenchy’s cheek…(just joking!!)
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posted by Charles H. Russo on Oct 18
After finding fashion-stalking was a common experience last week, I really felt I had to carry out some more extensive research. What is is about Parisiennes? Do they really have something other women don’t? A sort of Je Ne Sais Quoi?
Does this J-N-S-Q really exist? And can we describe it? Bottle it? Find a mathematical formula?
I asked some of the regulars at the Cafe de La Mairie.
>see the rest of the illustration
theparisblog.com
posted by Charles H. Russo on Oct 18
October 17th 2007
I was looking forward to my badminton match tonight when I get a call from my wife. “The strikes starts tonight at 8pm, not tomorrow!” she says. So I look on the net, all I find are details about the schedule tomorrow. I ask my coworkers and they confirm. I send an instant message to my badminton partner and give her the bad news. We decide to cancel, afraid of being stuck far away from home.
This is one of the biggest strikes in a long time. All the unions are participating. Tomorrow the traffic will be 15-25% for the metro. Already when it’s 100% the metro is completely saturated, with people pushing, shoving, and often arguing just to get on the next train. Even just 50% would be totally unusable during rush hour, but 15%? Forget it. And the 15% was for rush hour, outside of rush hour there will be practically no metro.
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