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Washington (CNN) -- President Obama on Sunday praised the "historic" House vote to pass a bill overhauling the nation's ailing health care system, and said now it is time for the Senate to "take the baton" and complete its work.
---CNN
At the White House:
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Crossposted at HuffPost.com. Comments not included here.
Hallelujah! Three years ago, I was transformed. I was sick and tired of all the problems I was having with my umpteenth PC, and slowly, over time, several friends finally convinced to try a Mac. I went to San Francisco for the holidays and went up to the spirit in the Apple sky, the flagship Apple store. I bought my first MacBook, and I was one happy girl--especially after I got through the totally do-able yet hair-pulling frustration period of throwing my PC knowledge into the poubelle and installing the latest Apple OS into my non-tech brain.
The next year I went back to San Francisco for the holidays, and I immersed myself in Apple classes and personal training sessions. I was determined to learn how to use the amazing media-producing machine I'd purchased, and that's exactly what I did. And FYI: I give that store, and its staff a stellar 10 out of 10 for their work and for their working with me. After all, I live in Paris and only had a limited amount of time to drill as much Apple info into my brain as possible. Because unlike New York, London, Sydney, and Tokyo, Paris didn't have a real Apple store. And sorry, France, and my French friends, but we all know about the almost non-existence of what the rest of the world knows as "Customer Service" in France. Plus, I'd had a major problem with the "Customer Service" that was here. It wasn't up to Apple snuff in my book.
Could Apple do sufficient training so a staff here could pull off Steve Jobs' amazing company concept?
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Ten years or so ago, I was entranced with Monet's Table: The Cooking Journals of Claude Monet that lived happily in my kitchen with the other cookbooks that I collected, which lined my white shelves. This particular book was a favorite because I loved France so. She had long since sung her siren call to me, and I had called my Arkansas snort back to her that I was doing the best I could to get there. (This was before I'd thought of the book that the Lone Wolf could write that did get us here called Chasing Matisse.) I lingered over the pages in the book and soaked up the beautiful photos of the Monet house and gardens as well as the luscious recipes the Monets served their artist celebrity guests. Even with the painter's strict schedule, the Monets frequently entertained--at lunch--and were generous hosts and servers of feasts.
So I decided in the middle of May of that year that I would give myself a French fix by throwing a long Monet lunch. On the record, the lunch was 10 hours long for those who hung in there until the drunken end. (You can read about it in another book my husband wrote called If These Walls Had Ears: The Biography of a House.) And by late afternoon on that Sunday (which is a key bit of information since we couldn't buy any liquor), we were out of champagne and, yes, driving to the houses of friends in an enormous chocolate Cadillac to inquire whether they happened to have any cold bottles of bubbly that they could loan us. It was purely and deliciously glorious.
This magic book of Monet's life and recipes carried me away to the painter's house in Vernon and made me dream of good food and France. One of the recipes that I turned to over and over again was for cèpes.
Continue reading "Letter From Paris: The Season for Cèpes" »
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By columnist Paul Paradis, Art Historian, Specialist Consultant in French Furniture and Decorative Arts
Dateline: Chicago
Sophisticated, less flashy than New York yet possessing a pinch of San Francisco charm, Chicago is a jewel in the crown of American architectural beauty and achievement. A boat cruise on the Chicago River provides a unique perspective on the layout and history of a truly unusual town. Although smaller than their Parisian cousins, the Bateaux Mouches, the river boats are pleasantly open and provide hot coffee and muffins to arriving visitors. (I pretended not to notice the bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream next to the coffee machine, since after all, it was time to concentrate on architectural wonders). To the sound of a piped-in classical music medley, we filed onto a green deck where white plastic patio chairs were lined up in neat rows and a highly varnished side bench flanked the edges.
Chicago Sears (now Willis) Tower and 311 South Wacker Drive
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The Word of the Media has come down from the mount after U.S. elections:
Obama Should Have Gone to Maine
Obama Shouldn't Have Gone to Maine
The Progressives Are Disappointed...The Progressives Are Mad...The Progressives Are Madder
The Tea Party Party Is A Bunch of Party Poopers
One Year Later Obama Has/Hasn't BLAH BLAH BLAH
And from the White House:
After reading their morning papers, President Barack Obama sat down with First Lady Michelle. The American media was on their minds.
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La Toussaint--All Saints Day--is over. The luscious golden, orange, violet, and ivory mums I saw sitting in pots at Père Lachaise, being delivered by men and old ladies in vans and being carried in their arms to the lost people they loved, are decorating the homes of the dead and the living in Paris.
Mums are one of Fall's embellishments that make October days seem lush...just before color leaks away in Winter. For Americans (and Europeans?), mums are one of Nature's signals that it's time to close our windows and cuddle up.
