Paris, France, October 28th 2008. Apologies once again for falling behind.  There seems to almost always be a lag time of about a week or so for this, particularly during periods when there are things to do like WATCHING AMERICA END THE NIGHTMARE OF THE BUSH ERA BY ELECTING ITS FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN PRESIDENT.  I’ll stop shouting now.

I am excited for the first meeting between Obama and Italy’s own pride and joy, Berlusconi, who called our President-elect “young, handsome, and,” [wait for it…] “suntanned.” Maybe something got lost in translation there.

After my blitzkrieg weekend in Belgium, I arrived in Paris to the kind of perfect weather that I’d soon find to be a rarity here for this time of year.  Mild, sunny, and with the pastel clouds of the changing seasons arranging themselves in the kinds of shapes and patterns and colors that would make an impressionist weep, interwoven patches of dazzling peaches and grays and purples.  The same clouds would, a few days later, drag in the cold and the rain, but for those first few days they were brilliant.

I walked along the Seine from St. Germain des Pres past the Eiffel Tower while en route to get a visa from the Vietnamese embassy way over in the 16th arrondissement.  I stopped along the water beneath the Pont du Carousel and listened to the water lap rhythmically and playfully against the stone as the barges passed by, cars and birds in the distance, a bagpipe somewhere off-stage, the voices of a few passersby reverberating in the tunnel beneath the bridge.