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When I was working at HP in 1985, I went to the corporate offices in Palo Alto to discuss some important technological thing or another.  I was standing in a standard HP building with cubicles, some half-high, adjacent to conference rooms.   I noticed something eerie.  Everything was dead quiet.  Really dead quiet.   I started … Read moreGlock 99 and Kiss Me

Off To School The number six train arrived at Corvisart with a loud screech.   Aiden got off the train and headed down the stairs with the crowd that spilled onto Boulvard Auguste Blanqui, a one-way street whose speed limit and curving design always made the journey to French class a challenge.  Then there were the … Read moreThe Stairs of Montmartre

I am preparing to write my goals for 2019.  I have done this every year for the last 25 years, ever since I read the Princeton Study which measured the success or failure of people in relation to their ability and willingness to write their annual goals down on paper.   For better or for … Read moreGoals for 2019 – S’il Vous Plaît

There is so much left to do.   That is the thought that continues to come back to me as I think about the future.   I am constantly reminded of how lucky we are to be alive and have the opportunities that we all have.  It is never as evident as when we consider events … Read moreLast Full Day in Paris

He was maybe three years old.  Cute.  Pulling his mother toward the beggar who lay semi-prostrate.  He wanted to give some money to the beggar.  The beggar was a middle-aged, bearded man with a dark, knitted skull cap laying against a tree on the side of Boulevard Saint-Michel.  His face wore the scars of the … Read moreThe Beggar on Rue Saint-Michel

We climbed six flights of stairs to get to our small studio apartment in the Montmartre district of Paris.  I had forgotten about the significance of being on the sixth floor!  When we were in Paris in 2013 we lived in an apartment in the 15th Arrondissement near the Eiffel Tower . . also, on … Read moreAu Levain D’Antan and The Universe

At 195 miles per hour on the TGV the French landscape silently slips by.  Farms, forests, power lines, and the memories of the past days are ever present.   And, we are headed to Paris for our last few days in Europe.  Europe will never be the same if Brexit isn’t reversed.  It is part of … Read moreThe Thinker

I climbed over a wooden stair that breached a barbed wire fence.  The top row of the barbed wire was frayed and broken.  I ducked to avoid it and shimmied my way through a row of berry bushes.  Freshly plowed furrows of farmland were at my feet.  And so were clods of dirt which stuck … Read moreFaulquemont Golf Course

Bitche is near the Maginot Line in the Alsace Lorraine region of France.  The bunkers were a famous French strategy to prevent Germany from invading France (again!) after World War One.  It didn’t work.  The Nazis went through Belgium.   The region is full of green rolling hills.  In each valley is a village of … Read moreBitche and the Maginot Line

We have been to Strasbourg three times.  And, every time I come to Strasbourg I am amazed at its beauty.  I remember reading in French language books about the city and its Gothic cathedral and thinking that it was just another old French city with a big church.  Then I came.   We went with … Read moreStrasbourg, The Magnificent City