The Usual Suspects - And A Birthday

Someone had a birthday!

This little piece of heaven is my granddaughter Zaine. She is displaying, for documentation purposes, the computer games I sent her for the occasion. She is eight.
In addition to being cute, she's bright as a new penny, and her grandpa is very proud of her.

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart







The next character in our line-up is suspect Wil, my grandson. He's probably guilty of about anything...not the least of which is referring to his sister as the "little satan" in an email to me just this afternoon (said in jest, obviously). I'll probably get this wrong and be chastised, but Wil is, I think eleven.

His mother just sent me the following information in an email:


Wil is working on a project for school having to do with some unused land.  He attends a "Charter School" which means he doesn't have all the school facilities as a regular school and they are in a building downtown with no play area.  They have used an abandoned lot as a play area for recess.  Well, his school has decided to lobby the city council to buy the land and lease it to the school for a play area.  The school will clean up and improve the lot (it has been unused for over 35 years).  The lawyer working with the project met all the kids involved and went to the principal with the suggestion that Wil be the one to address the city council on behalf of the school!  The principal and adviser agreed, so Wil will be addressing the city council at their next meeting in early April.  It is a HUGE deal and a big big honor!  They weren't even considering having a student do it before this lawyer met Wil and was just so impressed!  Wil is very excited about it and is handling it all very well. 

Knock 'em dead, Wil!

The final suspect, shown with proud papa, is the one responsible for this mess.  My daughter Lisa.  Thank you honey!!!

Potpourri

School Days, School Days
Sure wish I had more to report, but Jerry's been a dull, dull boy, but not a dullard. I been to school (école for those who speak French).
Saturday and Sunday Morgan and I did our intensive six hours a day in French. Now that I think of it, intensive is the proper name for it...or was that for me? Our instructor, Florent, has to have the patience of Job. Especially to put up with me. I've reported earlier on the different sounds and how they can make quite a bit of difference...and how Florent has been trying to pound them into my thick skull. He'll say a word, or sound, then I say it, then he says it back to me...his cute little way of telling me I haven't gotten it...then I say it back, and he repeats it and etc., etc., etc., until finally I'm so frustrated I just say "aw shucks (yeah, right, that's what I say), I'm not saying it anymore."

Usually, by this time, I'm getting pretty close to saying it right,or Florent is afraid I'll hit him with a croissant (they're so soft and fluffy here they could never be construed as a deadly weapon...unless taken internally), that he says, "You've got it." I sit down, and Morgan laughs out loud then snickers behind his hand for the next five minutes, and we move on.

The process is pretty frustrating, until we get to work and realize how much we've learned. Neither of us is speaking it very well at all. That has to come last, and has as much to do with confidence as knowledge, but our comprehension is markedly improved. We can tell by how much more we comprehend during meetings.

Florent (left) instructing the ineducable.










In case you can't pick it up, Morgan, that paragon of  fashion, has on his new, green Ireland sweatshirt and his burnt orange Texas cap. (can you say, "clash, clash?")

[Oh, and by the way, the picture on the wall (supplied by the landlord) is my candidate for the ugliest picture ever made. I don't know what it is supposed to be, but the name has to be something like condoms on a stick.]

 Sergeant Major Florent probably saying

"OU, OU, OU" for the fifteen hundredth time

Morgan seems to have a talent for picking out the French words from the mumbled, machine-gun audio to which Florent subjects us.  I keep fearing that one day Florent will repeat a sound one time too many times, Morgan will laugh just a little too loud, and he'll pick up a talent for walking with crutches.  Let's hope I maintain my legendary patience and control, huh?


A Night on the Town
A few weeks ago, Sebastian, one of our outside consultants, setup a little evening aperitif opportunity for us.  The site was a wine bar specializing in Italian wines (I know, France has really changed in the last twenty years, hasn't it?).  So a bunch of us troop down like Frenchmen.  (That means we worked until about 7:30pm then went out to eat and drink.)

The deal was really pretty neat.  Five separate wines were served, each from different regions in Italy and each with a complementary food or snack.  It's been way too long between then and now for me to remember the event clearly (or was that the wine?), but we started with a delightfully light white complimented by exceptionally good calamari.  The meal and the wine progressed through three more wines and was topped off with a raspberry desert and an absolutely surprising sweet desert wine to go with it.  To me it was the hit of the evening.

Monsignor Geiger arriving, greeted by the host, Sebastian, and Clothilde and Therese, two of our other consultants.

The "Monignor" is in reference to the hat which I am told reminds some of the holy spirit.  Doesn't matter to me...at my age a warm head is a good thing.

The rest of the suspects...I mean crew.

Betsy

Betsy est dans la masion!

Betsy arrived today.  Man, was she crated up nice and snugly.  Little dusty, but in great shape.  Put some new gas in her and she cranked right up after sitting for two months.  Love that girl.

Heaven to Hell - Part Deux

Pulled out of Mont-St-Michel about 1:30pm headed east to complete a bucket list item.  Normandy.

Headed east in Normandy,  seeing names burned into memory and history.  Landing on the Normandy beaches served to cut off the Contentin peninsula, isolating the deep water port of Cherbourg.

German resistance at Cherbourg was so strong and fanatical, that, when finally captured on 26 June, the port was virtually useless for several months afterward.  Caen was a major objective for the British in the early days of the invasion, but heavy resistance stalled Montgomery's Second Army until  Patton made his famous break-out at Saint Lô on July 24th.



Arrived at Bayeux about 3:00pm and found a room downtown at the Hotel Reine Mathilda.  Nice inexpensive room with my primary requirements, hot water, bed, and wireless internet connection.  All this for 55€.  I was second guessing my decision about 10:30pm when the young kids next door came in.  I was pretty sure I'd be able to hear hair hit the floor when  the young lady performed her evening brushing ritual, but,  fortunately, they went quietly off to sleep, and so did I, awakening fresh the next morning.

About a block down the street from the hotel, the ubiquitous beautiful church.

One of the most beautiful carved wooden doors I've ever seen. 

As much as I admired the church, I came for other reasons so, firing up the old Garmin, I head northwest on N13 toward a spot between the small villages of Colleville-Sur-Mer and Saint-Laurent-Sur-Mer...Omaha Beach.


Omaha Beach

Certainly not an overly impressive beach to a lad born and raised near Daytona Beach, Florida.



I was somewhat surprised to find the sand an orangey-tan, and not white (or gray), as represented by the hours of black-and-white film coverage I've seen over the years.  (Not to mention that wallowed in by Tom Hanks whenever he and his Rangers seemingly single-handedly captured Point-du-Hoc.)

I get the same feeling here I get at every battlefield I visit:  I understand every step they took...except the first one.  I do not know how they take the first one.   I think it has to do with how the military makes you a unit and you will do anything, even walk into blazing fire, to not let the buddy beside you down.


Open sand, or gravity slowing elevations?  Take your pick, neither were safe that day.  But at least the slope offered some spare cover.

North toward Point Du Hoc

It's getting a little late so I turn back toward Colleville-Sur-Mer to the American Cemetery there.

 This is the view walking down the path toward the cemetery.  A calm view looking out on the English Channel.

Then you look to the left....

 Over 9,000 U.S. Servicemen, the vast majority between 20 and 30 years of age

 HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY

A COMRADE IN ARMS

KNOWN BUT TO GOD

 The first cross on the first row:

ANTHONY S. BILOTTI

CY  USNR

NEW JERSEY,   JUNE 8, 1944

 Having long been a student of the U.S. Civil War, its causes, its leaders, its battles, and its strident state loyalties, as I walk this cemetery I understand, seeing Southerner next to Yankee next to Westerner, that WWII forged the metal melded in the crucible of that long ago sectional struggle.  We are one.  And
"tea parties" clamoring to break such a union because things aren't going as they would like are absurd.   I've mentioned my theory that God didn't make enough horses heads to go around, haven't I?

As I leave the cemetery I'm stopped by the sound of a single trumpet blowing taps.  I stop, turn toward the sound and find myself looking at the memorial sculpture that is the centerpiece of the memorial.  It was eerie.  Even crusty old farts can choke up.

The Bucket List Photo


 








Went back to the hotel, updated the blog, read using my Kindle (yeah, I really like it), and slept like an angel.
In fact, not on Betsy, I actually slept in this morning, then headed north to Point Du Hoc about 9:30 am.

Point Du Hoc
(Courtesy of the web)

Rangers on June 6, 1944.
Obviously taken after the capture of the site.  (See the "leaders" at the top looking down?)

The initial attack was carried out by three companies of the 2nd Ranger Battalion.  Only 225 men and officers, a seemingly small force to take such a well fortified position, but, space is everything in battle, and, I suspect, more than that and they'd become an impediment to each other.  Planned reinforcements (500+) didn't make it because the initial attack was forty minutes late starting and, by the time the signal flares were sent off announcing capture and requesting reinforcement, the allocated force of Rangers had already been deployed to Omaha beach.  This proved fateful because the force had to withstand significant counter-attacks for the next two days.  By the time they were relieved the original 225 men were down to 95, a very high casualty rate.

Looking northwest from Point Du Hoc

Southeast

Down

Gun Emplacement

Ammo Bunker

Your guess is as good as mine.

Inside looking out.

Outside looking in.
(Little late to ask, but do they have poisonous snakes in France?)







I left Point Du Hoc heading to Carentan, the center of U.S. 101st Airborne activity during the Normandy invasion.  Their story is well known from the mini-series 'Band of Brothers' produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

Church in Carentan

In the final analysis, after all these years, it's just sign posts and churches to denote places and events. Each has it's own little museum and tourist trap...just as we do in the states.  But these were serious places 65+ years ago.  And should be serious memories today.

"Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana

A short trip down the highway to the center of the 82nd Airborne offensive on D-Day

St-Mere-Eglise

Here the church is more significant.

It's actually a piece of the history of the attack.

Memorial depicting the famous incident where U.S. paratrooper John Steele (505th PIR) snagged his chute on the church and hung helplessly for several hours playing dead.  He was eventually captured by the Germans, escaped, then rejoined his unit in the attack which took the town.



Another great trip.  Thanks for the company.

Heaven to Hell - Part 1

Heaven to Hell - Part Un
Determined I was going to make a hit on the bucket list this weekend...and have.  Lots of pictures...lots of emotions.

Lots of ground...lots of things to see.

Pulled out about 9:00 am heading north toward Rennes.  (I defy anyone with a Texas accent to say the name of that city correctly.  I don't think it's ever going to happen for me.)

North on N137 toward Rennes.

Country road not far from Mont Saint Michel

Village (I believe Beauvoir)








The land flattens as I move toward the English Channel...all farmland...and even in the midst of that, history.

And then the first glimpse of something special rising out of the sea

According to legend, the Archangel Michael appeared before St. Aubert, the Bishop of Avranches in 708 instructing him to build a church on the precipice created by sea erosion at a rocky point called "monte tombe."  Story has it that Aubert repeatedly ignored the Archangel until St. Michael burned a hole in his skull with his finger (Mont Saint Michel). Read the story...it's amazing stuff.



This place was here, reaching toward heaven, when the Normans conquered Britain in 1066.  (That was the Battle of Hastings for those who don't remember their history. Remember, when you said, "Aw, man, that crap will never come up again.  Why do I have to remember it?"  Wrong again, study hall-breath.)





I drove in, paid my 5€ and was directed to a parking spot seemingly 12 kilometers from the site.  Walked for what seemed twenty minutes (but was probably no more than five) and saw this sign:

Missing Betsy here, folks.

Entered the main gate to find the place, after 1300 years had finally been captured and totally subjugated... by retail.

Plenty of neat little passage ways which lead off, and upward, always upward, toward the top of the spire of the church.



Some were open.







Some were guarded.

Once you rise above the commercialism, literally and figuratively, the place provided little surprises at each turn, at each level.

This was unexpected, at least by me.  But, judging from the traffic outside, I should have known people were dying to get in here.

Up about twenty steps from this burial site was a small chapel.

And looking up...still a long way to go.

And you're pretty well "up there" already.











And, looking up, more of more to go.
Was Robert Frost here?  (Okay...who gets that reference?)









Once up this high, you starting seeing doors marked "Private...No Entry," indicating, I think the habitations of some of the monks and caretakers.  I couldn't resist holding the camera up and over such a gate to see what views the residents had.

Finally, as an old Aunt once said, I had "put all in this trip I'm going to put into it," so I stopped and headed back down.  But what a view.

Took a moment to ponder the workmanship.  I don't know about you, but this looks to me like it was mortared about a month ago.

Reaching the parking level I saw this bunch of tourists all, lemming-like, following some tour guide carrying a large camera on a tripod out into the very, very muddy and slippery tidal area.
Sorry, but I have to say it: Only the English would traipse out into the mud on such a sojourn.






Have I mentioned I'm eating this stuff up?!!

Part Deux coming up.