“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
For audio version click here During two days in April we visited Normandy battle sites. I don’t much like the verb visited in this context. Tens of thousands of human beings were smashed into nothing here within living memory. I think that most people who travel to Pointe du Hoc and Omaha Beach, Sainte-Mere-Eglise and The American Military Cemetery do so for reasons other than mere tourism. Since 1945 France has evolved into a healthy […]
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For audio version click here In Paris on the last day of our visit, I stood, transfixed, in a small, dark room, six or seven galleries into the museum, in front of softly lit display cases. In my notebook I could only think of verbs – hack, pierce, smash, crush, rend, blast, gut, slice. In this dim light, the gleaming evidence all around me suggested that we are a species that willingly plunges into blood. I have […]
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For audio version click here Last week I watched five Old Church Mennonites, men who may not drive a car, build the central frame of a post and beam barn. They spoke quietly and moved around the beams and joists with a slow, unhurried efficiency. They were working with poplar and oak that had been cut on the property. The main beams were 12” by 12” and many feet in length. The wood was green […]
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For audio version click here Thinking we had escaped the claustrophobia of the plane, we pushed off from the Charles De Gaulle car rental lot, a hot pit sunk between entrance and exit ramps of the A-11 expressway, and drove south west toward Versailles under unfamiliar signs and in heavy traffic. I could feel myself at the edge of being stupid with fatigue, but I had to be alert, and Patti as well, to keep […]
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