Seabourn cruise – Don't Gel Too Soon

Big Birthday Memory #14: Life and Death on the Coast of France

Mont San Michel sized — On the approach to Mont San Michel

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from May 8, 2014.

It doesn’t look at all real – I know that. But it is. It’s also a place I’ve wanted to see for as long as I can remember. And here we are. Here we are! The sweet, formidable beauty of this place is matched only by its astonishing history – as a monastery, a prison and a target, from ancient times to the carnage and suffering of D-Day.

Mt-Saint-Michel has, for more than a thousand years, stood atop the rock upon which is was built. Its timelessness is much of what attracts people, I suspect, along with its ice-castle beauty and the awesome commitment of its inhabitants: the sacrifices made by these men on the mountain top, alone, virtually silent, with nothing to do but pray and take on their assigned chores, meditate and live out their lives in as holy a way as possible

SMEglise ike diorama crop — Ike sends US troops off to the D-Day invasion of Europe that helped win WWII.

Nearby, the small town of Saint-Mère-Élgise and its museum await the summer celebration of the 70th anniversary of D-Day and its remarkable exercise in vision, courage and grit. This diorama of General Eisenhower’s last visit with the men he was sending to fight and die is a moving one. Anyone who has ever seen his 1968 conversation with Walter Cronkite knows how well the General understood that half of those he sent out on D-Day would never return.

SMglise resistance — Resistance Armbands

SMeglise death book crop — Prayers to say if death is near; provided by the military

One group of special heroes and heroines represented at the museum were the Resistance – women and men who parachuted behind enemy lines, worked with local opponents of the Reich to complicate their war and, at great personal risk. transmitted by hidden radios everything they learned about their German enemy.

Aside from their real-life-spying, they also served in special, high-risk, low profile operations, commemorated in history, in films and in novels. I often used the Resistance stories and the children running messages and doing other support work as a way to engage our sons in history when we traveled. The drama and courage, and relevance, was and still is irresistible.

What you see here another of the profoundly moving exhibit items at the museum. Look carefully; it’s a page of prayers to support young soldiers dying in the field. Breathtaking as you stand among the photos of these young men and see how wise it was to offer them this comfort, and wonder if today’s military is inclined, or allowed for that matter, to provide similar comfort.

In all, the life of the monastery and loss that surrounds the beaches of Normandy really are bookends to how we live our lives. Life and faith, war and peace, courage, sacrifice, defeat and victory. It is the greatest gift of travel when these things present themselves and we remember how fragile, and how wondrous, the privilege of being alive and aware really is.

Lanny Budd, Hero for a Lifetime: a Pilgrimage to Juan-les-Pins

Lanny Budd lived somewhere on this hill .

He’s been part of my life for more than fifty years – dashing, smart, generous and always on the side of the angels. With him I wandered through most of the 20th Century in the company of critical figures including playwright George Bernard Shaw, powerful arms dealer Basil Zaharoff, Adolph Hitler and his brilliant propaganda director Joseph Goebbels, Leon Blum, the first Socialist (and Jewish) Prime Minister of France and of course Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, as well as the infamous “modern dance” pioneer Isadora Duncan, Chinese rebel leader Mao Tse Tung, and, among so many others, Albert Einstein and of course, FDR, whom he served as a Secret Agent from before WWII to well after the war.

When we met, he was 13 and I a couple of years older and, much like the NYT’s Julie Salamon, my mom introduced us and from our first meeting I knew that I would love him forever. His remarkable life revolved around his home base of Juan-les-Pins, where he grew up, and to which he always returned.

The house was built on the top of a rise, some way back, from the sea. It was of pink stucco with pale blue shutters and a low roof of red tiles. It was in the Spanish style, built around a lovely court with a fountain and flowers; there Lanny played when the mistral was blowing, as it sometimes did for a week on end.

Last week we went there, where Lanny lived, with Beauty Budd, his artist model mother. Though she and his father Robbie Budd, a New England arms dealer, never married, Robbie visited often, struggling to transmit his conservative capitalism to a young man living in dire danger of corruption among artists, journalists, socialists, communists and wealthy ladies, many of them an earlier version of trophy wives. Their fierce conversations were a wonderful window on the conflicts of those times.

Lanny is, of course, not real – at least not to everyone; he’s the hero of eleven novels written by the prolific Upton Sinclair (yes, he’s the one who wrote The Jungle) tracing world history between 1913 and 1949. Best-sellers all when they appeared in the 40’s and early 50’s and translated into 16 languages in 20 countries, the books formed much of my political and historic perspective and I was hardly alone.

When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime, I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to the authorities, but to Upton Sinclair’s novels. — George Bernard Shaw

As we walked through the village I turned to my ever-tolerant husband with a catch in my voice, said – surprising myself with the depth of my emotion “I’ve known him almost longer than I’ve known anyone except my family.” He and the saga that surrounded him felt, in so many ways, just that real.

One of Lanny’s childhood friends, Silesian, and bitter about the deprivation caused by enormous war reparations after WWI, became a Nazi; another, British and liberal, a fighter pilot and socialist.

His first wife ended up hanging around with with the Nancy Astor and the pro-German “Cliveden Set.” My world view was formed through their eyes and conversations and the events they faced as allies and sometime adversaries.

The books, Lanny, and the characters who moved in and out of his life were, for me – a very personal window on the horror and violence, courage and evil, glamour and idealism that was the first half of the 20th Century.

Oh, and of course, it being the South of France, the literary folks hung around there too. We had lunch at Scott Fitzgerald’s “Villa Saint-Louis”, just down the hill from Lanny’s neighborhood and now the Hotel Belle Rives.

Belle Rive fitz patio — “With our being back in a nice villa on my beloved Riviera (between Cannes and Nice) I’m happier than I’ve been for years. It’s one of those strange, precious and all too transitory moments when everything in one’s life seems to be going well.”  —F. Scott Fitzgerald, March 15, 1926, Juan-les-Pins (Plaque outside the hotel that was his home on the Riviera)

Clinton confidante Lanny Davis was named for Lanny Budd. The late NBC News anchor John Chancellor once told me he wanted to be Lanny Budd. At 15, I wanted to marry him.

Now, I wish I could have gone up the hill to the pink villa, rung the bell and just thanked him for all I learned from him, how much more available I am to travel and political thought and my own role in the world because I’ve known him. He may not be “real” but his impact on me, and so very many others, was profound.

Indeed, thanks Lanny, and Upton Sinclair, and my long-suffering husband who tolerated a pilgrimage to a place where not so much happened in the “real world” but plenty happened to me.

The Jews of Girona, Their Exile – and Bruce Springsteen (Seriously)

This is Girona, home to a large, prosperous, and effective Jewish community until a confluence of events took it all away.

In a single year, two historic moments changed western history and Jewish history, too. It was 1492. The very Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, partners in a marriage made to consolidate power, threw all the Jews out of Spain. Immediately. Convert or get out.

At the same time, of course, these same “Catholic Kings” sent Christopher Columbus on his way to the “new world” and forever changed faith, power and geopolitics.

The Jewish History Museum of Girona beautifully documents much of this story:

Two "JIDE" - Jewish figures from the 1050 "Creation Tapestry" and also seen here. — Two “JUDEI” – Jewish figures from the 1050 “Creation Tapestry”

The letters floating above these two little people say “JUDEI” – Jew.

This 14th Century mikvah was found only recently. How haunting, especially with the recent mikvah scandal, to see before us evidence of how long women have honored this commitment.

Words from a tombstone (see next picture)

For some reason, this just felt extra sad. There are so many little boys in my life – and some big ones – so maybe that’s part of it. Beyond that though, the humanness and loss felt so real, and the suffering of those times so much more concrete as I absorbed the words of this one grieving parent.

But what, you may ask, does any of this have to do with Bruce Springsteen? Well, as I entered the lovely museum gift shop, attended by this equally lovely gentleman, I heard Bruce on the radio. Gradually, I realized that he was singing My Hometown.

Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more
They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back to your hometown

Last night me and Kate we laid in bed Talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I’m thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around
This is your hometown

Exile and loss, pain and deprivation can be understood on so many levels. Just as the Jews were brutally ejected from the homes and community they had so painstakingly built, so were workers throughout this country as the factories and mines and mills that had sustained them for so long collapsed. Although on a different scale, they too lost everything they knew and the life they had loved, and were forced to find another, unknown place to call home. Although less brutally required to depart, they had no choice, really.

Loss of home, love, family and community is a hardship experienced by more and more people throughout the world. Hunger, terrorism, civil war, drought, economic collapse and religious, gender and racial discrimination hurt in different ways and to different degrees, but the pain is the same in nature if not in degree. The only thing that changes is the faith, or class, or color of the refugees. We still certainly don’t seem to have learned to care much more today when it happens to people who aren’t us.

Battles and Bougainvillea in the South of France

maquis — Maquis of the French Resistance

There’s lots of history around here – spread out among the beauty that distracts from most of it. For the second time, today in the village of Borme Les Mimosas, the flowers overwhelm. Borme wins the best in show award for the region regularly and it’s not hard to see why. But before I share the loveliness, here’s a cool fact: the WWII resistance fighters known as Maquis got their nickname from the dark green plants and shrubs that covered huge swaths of ground and offered perfect hiding places – so perfect that the brave men and women they sheltered came to share the name.

War history haunts the fields and French villages crammed with memorials and statues, villages also overflowing with flowers, climbing the walls, overtaking public walkways and making very turn in the tiny streets a wonderful new surprise.

So for the second and probably the last time, here are the award-winning blooms. This time: the flowers of Borme des Mimosas.

Multicolored Bloomd og Borme — Multicolored Blooms of Borme

Bourn flower petals — Flower petals fill a tiny square

Bourn Bougenvillia path — Borme’s purple pathway

Bourn covered passage — Flower-decked covered passageway

How’s that for a treat and a break from all the awfulness that seems to haunt us lately. Whoever urged us to stop and smell the roses – well. . .

Harbors, Cathedrals, Markets and Lavendar UPDATED

AIZ Marseille boats and cathedral — Harborside view of Marseilles and her cathedral

Marseille was a funky town once. Now it’s got a shiny harbor, some beautiful museums and broad vistas, a hugely diverse population and close to a million tourists per year – up from the 20,000 it claimed when we were there in the 1980’s.

On arrival we went almost at once to nearby Aix-en-Provence, and its markets, lavender shops, cathedrals and history. (Even aerosol olive oil – see second pic.)

The wars are here too, as they always are in Europe – today in memory plaques for the “martyr’s of the Resistance.” The story of those real participants is scary and moving and true. There’s also a memorial to those who helped to liberate Aix.

It was really hot in Marseilles so we took this tiny train on a one-hour circle up to the Basilica Notre-Dame de la Garde and back.

And on the way, one more reminder of the continued ghost of WWII here – this tank was part of the liberation of Marseille and sits on a triangle of land among apartments and houses and a plain residential neighborhood. History doesn’t have to repeat itself – it’s still here.

Really Pretty Piece of History: Fortifications and Flowers

It was all about the fortifications back then. This lovely walkway in Fort Grimaud has existed for centuries. It’s part of the walled village of Fort Grimaud about half an hour outside St. Tropez.

No major earthshaking moments today but still lovely and intriguing, reinforcing the reality that being safe, enclosed and protected – keeping marauders or warriors or other bad guys at bay – that was the bottom line.

As we made our way back to the ship, the Romany (gypsies to many) were out in force – this is just one of the parking lots we passed – jammed with their trailers, laundry trailers, cooking trailers and more. Our guide kept telling us how everyone had to “watch their wallets.” These folks have a pretty bad reputation across Europe as pickpockets and other mischief makers.

Fort Grimaud also recalled this: s in the rest of Europe, the World Wars are central to the soul of so many still – all these years later. These two – a monument to those in this small town who died in World War I and a 1940 declaration of peril from French General Charles de Gaulle in 1940 ,the year war once again descended on his country. London to Lithuania to France – these wars haunt memory and remind residents of fear, and death, and loss.

Then there are these — we were the first customers for Lorenzo and Gerard in their new shop – gorgeous earrings for me! AND then lunch with some new friends and the best salad (with extra summer tomatoes) ever…..

How Pizza Margharita Got It’s Name PLUS Enchanting Dolceacqua

That’s the Castello at Dolceacqua, alongside Claude Monet’s wonderful portrayal of it. It stands at the start of the stone pathway that crosses the bridge and leads into this ancient, wonderful beehive where, since the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries people have lived, shopped and tolerated the tourists.

It’s a quiet, special treasure, a bit mysterious, mixing the distant past with today, and far more fun and exciting for us because we hadn’t expected much at all from this trip designed to get us out of the shopping center that is San Remo.

NOW – about that Pizza Margharita. Our wonderful guide, Giusiana, as we passed a statue of “Regina Margharita” added yet another factor to her wonderful narrative. WHAT is the reason the much beloved Pizza Margharita bears her name? A baker created it in the colors of the Italian flag: tomato sauce for red, basil for green and mozzarella for white — and dedicated it to her in thanks for her just and creative role as the first woman ruler of Italy.

And there you have it – another brief, photo-heavy offering. It’s late again – and it was a wonderful day. I am reminded every day as we move from place to place of the value of travel – learning the narratives and dreams and history of other cultures and finding within them lessons for our own.

Done with Bonaparte: Portoferraio, Mark Knopfler and Napoleon

This little fountain sits behind Napoleon’s “summer residence” in Elba, where he was exiled in disgrace after a horrific defeat — one Mark Knopfler described in his beautiful Done With Bonaparte. Napoleon never lived here; this house outside Portoferraio Italy was not his home but was to be a summer retreat. He fled Elba before he ever spent a night there.

The small island also includes several other beach towns with lovely harbors. There are also some lovely – and some weird, — sights. I’ve added a few below.

Right now it’s really late; I’ve shared some of Knopfler’s lyrics from his meditation on the suffering of Napoleon’s soldiers in the defeat that cost their leader his command and position, and cost them far more:

We’ve paid in hell since Moscow burned

As Cossacks tear us piece by piece

Our dead are strewn a hundred leagues

Though death would be a sweet release
And our grande army is dressed in rags

A frozen starving beggar band
Like rats we steal each other’s scraps

Fall to fighting hand to hand

Save my soul from evil, Lord
And heal this soldier’s heart
I’ll trust in thee to keep me, Lord
I’m done with Bonaparte

I pray for her who prays for me
A safe return to my belle France
We prayed these wars would end all wars
In war we know is no romance
And I pray our child will never see
A little Corporal again
Point toward a foreign shore
Captivate the hearts of men

Save my soul from evil, Lord
And heal this soldier’s heart
I’ll trust in thee to keep me, Lord
I’m done with Bonaparte

2015-06-11 10.25.40 — Everybody needs a Mussolini apron – buy one just outside Napoleon’s summer house!

2015-06-11 10.09.26 — Old Portoferraio in oil

2015-06-11 11.18.43 — The harbor in Porto Azzuro

Grazie Roma

Two very full days in Rome, jet lagged but determined. The Coliseum and the Forum captured our imagination in new ways as we learned more about the lives of early Romans, their gladiators and their rulers. Jewish slaves helped to build the deadly theater. The famous Arco di Tito – Arch of Titus – bears images of a menorah because along with those Jewish slaves, captured at the fall of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, the conquering Romans brought treasure, including Jewish artifacts, and chose to represent them on Titus’ arch.

We did so much more but our first night on the Sojourn is almost upon us and we need to be up early to see Napoleon’s summer home. Here are a few more pix of Rome.

OH and Grazie Roma? It’s the best sports anthem ever, and the TODAY SHOW’s 1985 Rome week closed with Antonelo Venditti singing it, along with huge crowd of happy Rome residents, as we all celebrated on the Spanish Steps.

Hail and Farewell: Leaving Camp Seabourn

They all marched down the center aisle of the salon to echoes of No Day but Today, the lovely song from Rent . They’re all young, and from more than 30 countries: engineers and stewards, restaurant staff and destination coordinators, Captain and cruise director, performers and crew.

It was the last night of the trip and we’d just left Petersburg, one of the world’s loveliest cities.

The drama of its grim history, combined with its beauty, left all of us with full hearts. The emotion and the fact that in the morning our floating dormitory would deposit us and all our worldly goods in Stockholm and end the magic journey left us vulnerable. Watching these young people, who had been so deeply involved in our lives, slammed us up and over the top, leaving nearly 300 of us moved and weepy.

For a bunch of worldly travelers, who’ among us had been everywhere from Antarctica to Burma to Saigon, we were pretty sappy. The staff would welcome new cruisers hours after we left, but this artful end to a perfect trip, so much like the last day of camp, really, was sentimental and perfect.