While we didn’t get a lot of rain at our hose today, other areas north of us did.
Category: Clouds
Paws
Diné laid under the chaise lounge with her paws crossed, while beautiful thunderheads built up over the Sandias and floated by earlier in the afternoon. A vulture appeared to fly above the clouds as it circled over the river. The picturesque clouds turned into a dust storm in the late afternoon, but, alas, no rain.
Out and About
I drove through north Corrales and all access to the river and bosque are closed. People say we are in a drought, but really we are experiencing what is more normal for arid New Mexico. So if the bosque and state parks and wilderness areas are only going to be open when we have above normal rainfall, New Mexico may end up being closed for longer than most of us will live. Rosencrantz was hanging out in the bamboo looking smart, and René was having a bad hair day after I gave him a shower.
Six Differences
A happy dragon fly was flitting around this morning. We did a lot of yard work today. Can you find six differences between the 2nd and 3rd photos? Rosencrantz was sitting in the window by the front door wanting in, but I was on the deck. Instead of going through and letting him in, I photographed him through the glass in the door to the sunroom. He finally gave up and walked around the house to join us on the deck and lay on the table with Guildenstern.
Rain Smuggler
Don’t tell anyone, but I did sneak a little bit of rain past customs. It’s a piddling amount, just enough to turn the dust on the cars into muddy drops, but it’s rain all the same. When I went out to photograph the clouds, a hummingbird hovered at what it thought was a safe distance from my lens, but even in the low light of overcast skies at dusk, I got a clear shot of it hovering in front of clouds. A crow flew through my photo of the backlit clouds, and as it flew over me I could see it had something in its beak, but it was so strongly silhouetted against the clouds, I couldn’t see what it had.
Paris to Albuquerque
When we left Paris yesterday morning it was cloudy and 60º F, when when we touched down in Albuquerque it was sunny and 100º F — from cold and wet to hot and dry. Soon after take-off from Paris we above the clouds and it stayed cloudy until a break in the clouds over Hudson bay showed ice breaking up, and then we flew over the area of the bay that looks like land cracked with water, and it was covered with snow and ice. Then we had mostly cloud cover again until we were almost to Salt Lake City. From SLC to Albuquerque the sky had some high clouds but there was a lot of haze in the air from the fires.
France Day 26 Paris vaut bien une messe
In chapter 33 of their book “1066 and All That” W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman conclude their section on the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre with “After the massacre the French King, Henry of Navarre, turned Roman Catholic and made his memorable confession – ‘Paris is rather a Mess’…” Their humorous interpretation of “Paris vaut bien une messe” describes the time as well as the original saying. After Henry of Navarre took the throne to become King Henry IV he paid off his enemies instead of waging endless, costly wars against them; he also ended the “religious wars” that he had fought in when he issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598. With the help of the minister Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, they regularized the state finances, and then they set about cleaning up Paris and restoring it as a great city. They also undertook public works and promoted education throughout France to improve the life of all people so there would be “a chicken in every pot”, which made Henry IV one of the most popular French kings ever. Although he was popular with the people, he had political and religious enemies. On the third attempt on his life, Henry IV was assassinated in 1610 by a Catholic fanatic, François Ravaillac, when Henry IV’s coach was stopped by traffic congestion in the Rue de la Ferronnerie. You can see that Henry IV was a man of good humor from the painting of him as Hercules vanquishing the Lernaean Hydra painted around 1600 by Toussaint Dubreuil. And I think he would have enjoyed “1066 and All That” as well.
We were in the Louvre and Orsay multiple times yesterday and the photos show the changing light as we walked back and forth between the apartment, the Louvre and the Orsay from mid-morning until 10:30 pm when we got home for the night.
France Day 18 A walk on Champs Élysées
Laurie and I stood in line and got tickets for Handel’s opera Guilio Caesare, and then walked the Champs Élysées for our 31st wedding anniversary. Our walk was from the Opera down one side of Champs Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe, a loop around the Arc, a shot of the CBD, the a walk up the other side of the Champs Élysées through the Jardin des Tuileries and the Louvre and back home. Along the way we saw the latest Renault Dezir on a showroom floor, and an old Citroën 2CV driving by. On the way to the Arc de Triomphe the sidewalk was covered with people as far was you could see, and the Champs Élysées had a constant flow of bumper to bumper traffic. The many cafes and restaurants lining the sidewalks were full of people and there was a mix of tourists gawking, street venders hawking, and well dressed business men and women making their way through the hustle and bustle.
Bathroom stops are quite interesting — you have to pay to pee in Paris, and you certainly can’t pee in peace, because there is always a woman in the men’s side cleaning. We stopped at the restroom at the entrance to the Jardin des Tuileries, and there was quite a line. There were several attendants keeping order on letting people in and out of the bathrooms. I got waved through, payed my 50 cents, and was standing at the urinal when I heard “Pardon!” in a female voice and felt a nudge against my shoulder. The cleaning woman was mopping making me and the guy next to me step over and around the mop while we were trying to pee. When there is a constant stream of people, she just cleans around them.
We got back to the apartment from our walk around 7:00 pm, then we went out to the Monoprix (a French Corte Inglés) and got food. Laurie made a pizza with bread, lardon (a cross between bacon, ham and salt pork), creme fraiche, eggplant and a medium aged Cantal cheese for dinner that was really good. You can see the outside of our apartment on the building in the last photo. The tiny window in the roof is the kitchen and the main room looks out the gabled windows on either side.
France Day 17 Aix to Paris
When we left Aix en Provence it was raining; it rained all the way to Paris, and when we came up out of the metro at Opera to go to the apartment we are renting, in was pouring rain. The first photo is a panorama of Aix viewed from up the hill from where we stayed. The second photo is a farm from the TGV traveling at 200 mph. The rest of the photos are of the apartment we are renting for the rest of our stay in Paris. It’s on the fifth floor (sixth, American) of a building at the corner of Ave de l’Opera and Rue d’Antin in Bourse, in the 2nd arrondissement, a block from the Palais Garnier – Opéra national de Paris (last photo).
France Day 16 Chateau d’If
Our last day in Provence, and the sea was calm enough for us to get a boat out to Chateau d’If, the island castle turned prison that was made famous by Alexandre Dumas in his novel The Count of Monte Cristo. The most famous prisoner on Chateau d’If was Edmond Dantes, Dumas’ fictional character who was wrongly imprisoned on d’If for 14 years, and who meets the Abbe Faria after Faria digs a tunnel into Dantes’ chamber. Faria educates Dantes, Dantes escapes posing as the dead Faria, and becomes the Count of Monte Cristo. Even though Dantes and the Abbe never existed, there is a tunnel adjoining two chambers that are labeled Abbe Faria and Edmond Dantes. The castle is in great condition with access to almost every room. In some of the rooms they have sound effects to give added ambience. There are lots of seagulls nesting on the island, and ignoring the signs saying that seagulls are dangerous, I got very close to one that sitting on her eggs. She was very vocal about my close proximity, but simply held her ground.
Off Center & Not Even 