Woman’s Torso, Henry Moore Sculpture Park
Category: Sundays
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Whoa! Kate Reese in Three Hours in Paris has her very own La Femme Nikita moment: she has to dismantle her Lee Enfield before the Nazis come charging into the building. She starts to sweat. She stores the parts in a large canvas bag and conceals them beneath bunches of dandelions.
She emerges from an alley
onto a road that was really no more than a steep step of stairs lined with teardrop lampposts leading down the hill from Sacre Couer . . . Behind her at the top of the stairs came a flurry of horns, shouts, and the thump of boots . . . “Achtung!”
— Three Hours in Paris, p. 54Lucky for Kate, there’s a man selling melons right at the base of the steps. Immediately, he is swarmed by the Gestapo and pushed into a car decorated with swastikas. Clearly, they’ve mistaken the melon seller for the shooter. Phew!
Whenever I read a book set in Paris, I get nostalgic. One summer, my friend let me stay in her apartment that sits at the bottom of the steps to Sacre Couer. It was a short walk to the Turkish quarter, where early in the morning men sipped Turkish coffee from tiny, delicate cups (and looked at me askance the few times I dropped by for some coffee).
Another nearby haunt was an atelier. The designer made one-of-a-kind wallets and handbags. She’s still in business, I get regular emails from her.
In John Wick 4, the climactic final battle takes place on those very same steps. John Wick has something like 10 minutes to reach the top (I forget why) and there’s a fresh assassin on every step. He kills them all, of course. And does make it to the top, in 10 minutes. YAY!
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There is an English cemetery in Dharamsala.
It’s a desolate place. The Anglican church is abandoned. The dates on the grave markers show that the soldiers were very young, twenty or twenty-one years old. They died putting down a rebellion, sometime in the 19th century. The grief of their families must have been sharp, especially since they are buried so far from home.
Max, one of two brothers who ran the Snow Crest Inn, where I was a guest in January 2012, showed it to me. Max was 26, married, with two small children. He refused to let me wander unaccompanied. So we went to the market, to the monastery, up and down the crooked streets. I stayed a week. It was very cold, and the inn lost power for two days. I thought I’d die. It was the first time I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering, and the sound was loud. I’m amazed I didn’t crack a tooth.
In the morning, Max and his brother knocked at the door to my room. “Madame, are you all right?” I could barely answer: “I’m all right. Bring more blankets!”
Posting for Debbie’s One Word Sunday.
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One of my great Airbnb finds of the last couple of years was an East London flat facing Haggerston Park, where I stayed the summer of 2022. Not only was the flat homey and spacious, it had the most interesting collection of books (I looked up the flat, thinking to return the following year, but the rate had doubled).
Here was one of the books:
Posting for Debbie’s One Word Sunday.
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Posting for Debbie’s One Word Sunday.
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Roma Norte, Mexico City, 2 March 2024
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Posting for Debbie Smyth’s One Word Sunday challenge. This Sunday, the word is LINES.
Pacita Abad was a Filipino artist who was known for her inspired use of vivid color and mixed media. I was so lucky to catch this exhibit (which ended its run at San Francisco MOMA two weeks ago).
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Sculpture by Mark di Suvero: Born 1933, Shanghai; based in New York and Petaluma
Che faro senza Eurydice (Google Translate: What a Lighthouse without Eurydice)
1959
Wood, rope, and nails
Posting for Silent Sunday.
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Fred Monahan, a twenty-year-old marine lance corporal is in a jungle, enduring a rainstorm that’s lasted for hours. It’s dark, he can’t see, but he know just enough Vietnamese to be able to understand the shouts that are approaching his position: “Die, Americans!”
The Viet Cong use Russian-supplied AK-47s, the Americans have M16s. When the enemy opened fire with their AK-47s, green tracers flew by his head. When he returned fire with his M16, “red tracers flew at the green tracers.” But then his M16 jammed. He grabbed another M16 from a wounded comrade; that jammed, too.
It was the beginning of close fighting between the Americans and the Viet Cong at Khe Sanh, a battle that was to last 12 days. Later, it was reported that about 40% of the Americans’ M16s had jammed.
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The first bulk order for the AR-15 came on Dec. 4, 1961: The Pentagon ordered 1000 AR-15s for the South Vietnamese Army.
- “The average South Vietnamese soldier weighed ninety pounds; they needed a rapid-fire gun with light recoil.” (American Gun, p. 100)