Kanlaon

On this day, 13 years ago, self woke ahead of everyone else in her household, and turned the TV on to CNN.  Some stupid pilot — maybe someone who was distracted or who had covered up his incompetence and managed to get a job flying planes anyway — had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings. Later, a second plane crashed, and it was at that moment that self went running to the bedrooms and woke up The Man, woke up Son, and told them, “Something’s happening.” And then all three of us stayed watching in front of the TV, until it was decided that Son would go to school.

Self was teaching a night class in USF, and only much later did she get word that the class would be canceled.

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On pp. 109 – 110 of Alan Furst’s superlative spy novel Dark Star:

The Parisian spring flared to life — one hot morning and all the women were dressed in yellow and green, on the café terraces people laughed at nothing in particular, aromas drifted through the open doors of bistros where the owner’s briard flopped by the cash register, a paw over its nose, dreaming fitfully of stock bones and cheese rinds.

The OPAL network was run from a three-story building near the quai of the canal Saint-Martin and the canal de l’Ourcq, at the tattered edge of the nineteenth arrondissement where the streets around the Porte de Pantin turned to narrow roads leading into the villages of Pantin and Bobigny.  A pulsating, sleepless quartier, home to the city’s slaughterhouses as well as the stylish restaurants of the avenue Jean-Jaures, where partygoing swells often ventured at dawn to eat fillet of beef baked in honey and avoid the tourists and taxi drivers down at Les Halles.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.