Hill Center near Eastern Market on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC is sponsoring a Travel Writing and Blogging class July 24, 2012, 6 to 9 pm. Register now for this creative adventure.
Hill Center partners with The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland to recruit instructors for Hill Center’s writing classes.
At Silver Docs a few days ago, during the Documentary Film Festival at AFI in Silver Spring, I swooned over this film DV:The Eye Has to Travel about Diana Vreeland. She was the editrix-empress of Vogue, long before the Devil Wears Prada. The director of the documentary answered questions after 
the screening and revealed she is married to one of Vreeland’s grandchildren the access to contacts and family archives was fluid. Said the film project grew out of a book she was already working on. The images are fab — wry, witty commentary on the 1960s and 70s.
My friend Virginie Raguenaud is publishing this wonderful book about the artists who painted in Catalonia. I can’t wait to read it!
At the end of my trek across France through the Pyrénées Mountains, I rested in Ceret and sketched the fishing boats and old seaside buildings. When I left town, I boarded a train in Ceret and transferred to another heading east across Provence. During the interlude waiting for the long distance train, I marveled at the scenes around the train station in Perpignan which Salvador Dali dubbed the center of the world.
“It has become so to-day that when you see the flag boldly and proudly displayed you smell a rat somewhere. The flag has become a cloak to hide iniquity. We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it it means danger, revolution, anarchy. ”
Author Henry Miller wrote this in 1941 during a cross-country road trip of the United States of America. He had lived in Paris during the 1930s and settled in California after returning to the States, as described in the Air-Conditioned Nightmare.
I apply Henry Millers mid 20th century observations to the 21st century ornamental habit practiced by Congressional elites, Cabinet members and corporate executives — the wearing small U.S. flag pins on their suit lapels. Do they control the flag and what it stands for?
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Henry Miller, New Directions Publishing Corp, 1945, p. 37.
Henry Miller Online Resources:
A review of Air-Conditioned Nightmare that appeared in The Satirist.
Henry Miller website by Valentine Miller, his daughter.
Nexus, The Henry Miller Journal.
Henry Miller Memorial Library, Big Sur, California
Hill Center near Eastern Market on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC is sponsoring a Food Writing Master Class June 14, 2012, 6 to 9 pm. Hill Center partners with The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland to recruit instructors for Hill Center’s writing classes.
Register now for this creative adventure. Or choose the Travel Writing and Blogging class July 24, 2012, 6 to 9 pm
Topographic maps and guides for walking in France are available at the online store run by the French Association for Hikers — Fédération Francaise de la Randonnée Pédestre. The search function enables you to look by region, départment (regions in France) and by other parameters.
Pyrénées-Atlantiques – Western region towards Atlantic Ocean
Hautes-Pyrénées – High Pyrénées in the central mountains
Pyrénées- Orientales – Eastern region near the Mediterranean Sea
Read more about the Pyrénées Mountains at http://www.PyreneesPilgrimage.com
In Gaston Hall, on the evening of April 2, 2012 Margaret Atwood mused on debt, payback, revenge and 
what might the world be like now if the events of September 11, 2001 has been forgiven (after a period of thoughtful mourning) by the affected nations and their political leaders instead of a trigger excuse to bomb a swath of the Middle East and Central Asia into smithereens, killing hundreds of thousands of ordinary people and extending the dull-minded cycle of revenge.
Never mind, it didn’t happen that way. Forgiveness costs too much.
But what is the price of payback? 
Does anyone know the number of multi-national soldiers who have died in the endless Middle East wars? Does anyone know the number of children, elders, women and men killed because they were in the way of military actions in Ir-Af-Pak during the decades after 2001?
My thought is that forgiveness is a magnificent gesture of leadership. It would require a period of sorrowful reflection and consultation with the other countries whose nationals perished in the event.
* 2,176 of the people who died at the WTC were born in the USA.
* 573 were born in other countries.
* Data in the report noted below are based on 2,746 death certificates filed with the Office of Vital Records and 3 deaths that were reported outside New York City through October 31, 2003.
* Data on total deaths related to the events of that day in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia were not included in the WTC Disaster Death report authored by the City of New York.
Source: Departent of Mental and Mental Hygiene, Bureau of Vital Statistics, The City of New York. Special Section: World Trade Center Disaster Deaths, December 2003. http://www.nyc.gov/health
We were driving along hinterland roads in Queensland. Sounds remote, but we were only about 2 hours from Brisbane. Bushes at the roadside shimmied and Peter braked, calling out, “Quick get your camera!” Peter and Sandra watched while I snapped a few images of the marsupial.
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