This book made a great souvenir as I was walking the streets of Paris in May/June of 2017. I purchased it at the infamous "Shakespeare and Company" book store in the City of Lights.
On writing in Paris...
Sadness of Fall, but there's always Spring...
This was basically our same path we walked every day down to the city sights...
"...I could never be lonely along the river [Seine]"
Ever since reading that George Patton book, I suddenly find myself with somewhat of an interest in WW2 history. The basic gist of this book: soldiers on a mission to save the great works of art stolen by the Nazis.
***************************************
"It is amazing how the world can change, he thought, during the life span of a fruitcake."
"I believe that all this loveliness showing through the rubble and wreck are just foreshadowings of the joys we were made for.”
Baseball:
"During the Bulge, Posey told him, the Germans had parachuted troops behind Allied lines dressed in American uniforms. The only way to find them out was to ask questions on strictly American topics, like baseball. The Germans were always clueless."
New York City:
"To see a painting of this quality leaning against the wall of a command post amid the bullets and the grime was to understand that great works of art were part of the world. They were objects. They were fragile. They were lonely, small, unprotected. A child on a playground looks strong, but a child wandering alone down Madison Avenue in New York City—that’s terrifying."
It was so cool reading this book and THEN taking a trip to Paris, staying in the Latin Quarter! :
"First Lieutenant James Rorimer rode his bicycle to Rose Valland’s apartment in the fifth arrondissement, an ancient section of Paris known as the Latin Quarter. The quarter had been popular with tourists before the war, but few tourists, Rorimer suspected, had ever visited Valland’s middle-class residential area, a lonely and secluded stretch just beyond the site of a massive fire started by German bombardment in August 1944."
"Sometimes, Rose Valland thought as the snows of December 1944 floated down around her, your destiny is thrust upon you." (Photo on left - Translation: "Hero of the Arts")
"Destiny is not one push, she thought as she waited to cross a quiet street on that cold Paris evening years later, but a thousand small moments that through insight and hard work you line up in the right direction, like a magnet does with metal shavings."
In my travels I have been to the Hemingway House in Key West and the Hemingway Memorial in Sun City, Idaho, and as well as even walking the streets of Paris where Ernest walked and lived and wrote.
I am now on a Hemingway kick, peppering his writings in between my other reads of fiction and non-fiction alike. As always, food for the songwriting soul.
On Writing:
"When I was growing up, my parents always told me that my grandfather said write about what you know."
I have spent over a week walking up to 15 miles a day on the streets of Paris in late Spring, hence this passage of text was interesting enough for me to highlight it and many others like it, on my kindle. Guess you had to be there. ;)
** "I went out onto the sidewalk and walked down toward the Boulevard St. Michel, passed the tables of the Rotonde, still crowded, looked across the street at the Dôme, its tables running out to the edge of the pavement. Some one waved at me from a table, I did not see who it was and went on. I wanted to get home. The Boulevard Montparnasse was deserted. Lavigne’s was closed tight, and they were stacking the tables outside the Closerie des Lilas. I passed Ney’s statue standing among the new-leaved chestnut-trees in the arc-light. There was a faded purple wreath leaning against the base. I stopped and read the inscription: from the Bonapartist Groups, some date; I forget. He looked very fine, Marshal Ney in his top-boots, gesturing with his sword among the green new horse-chestnut leaves. My flat was just across the street, a little way down the Boulevard St. Michel."
** "It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing."
** "Brett looked at me. “I was a fool to go away,” she said. “One’s an ass to leave Paris.”
** "I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was a Château Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company."
** "Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back. I would dine there again some time and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France."
And finally...
** "I hated to leave France. Life was so simple in France."
On the last day of our trip to Paris, as I had just exited a gift shop (somewhere around where this crooked window photo on the left was taken) ......I get a message from our Airbnb host,
"Hi Steve, I heard about the terrorist attack in front of Notre Dame. I hope you are fine. Any way I heard that only the terrorist was injured. Just try to avoid Notre Dame area because around that area I heard that everything is blocked..."
I can't say I was surprise. Alarmed, but not surprised. A lone, hammer-wielding man attacks police and is very quickly brought down.
Okay, so when returning to our rented place, we'll go around the area.
Then we realized, "What about the concert we had tickets for that same evening being held inside the gargoyle protected cathedral?"
On our way back to our "home" area across Point de Sully and over the tiny island of île Saint-Louis, back to the Latin Quarter, we passed police directed traffic jams. (Below)
Somber, overcast sky hangs over Notre Dame just hours after the incident. (Below)
Stopping at our favorite, La Methode Restaurant, we pondered our next adventure. Will the concert go on? Would the performers bow out? Our waitress, as well as an employee who just arrived, said they'd probably have the square in front of Notre Dame closed. I called Shakespeare & Company book store near the river Seine (a prior visit told me they spoke English) to have them tell me it looks like the area is open.
We decided to see for ourselves.
We were rewarded with an amazing experience. Under heavy security, the likes of which I have never seen before in person, all patrons were ushered into a side door. The concert, Ordo Virtutum by Hildegarde Von Bingen, would go on! (see below) (I filmed a short video excerpt of concert at very bottom of this post) [Ordo Virtutum is about the struggle for a human soul, or Anima, between the Virtues and the Devil...] *Wikipedia .
With the cathedral's outside perimeter bathed in a halo of armed police, the vocalists on the altar, and vocalists entering from behind, it was as though angels were all around us!
Still trying to put this night into words, but I'll just say that I felt part of a world of peace-loving citizens who aren't about to let the evil in the world win out, because in the end, it doesn't!
Heading back to dessert (and a beer for me), we passed a welcomed line of vehicles manned by the men and women who deal with this on the front lines every day. (see below)
We were safe and I was so deeply moved by this, our last evening in the City of Light.
Sub-heading: Books I've read. 
Sadness of Fall, but there's always Spring...
On the last day of our trip to Paris, as I had just exited a gift shop (somewhere around where this crooked window photo on the left was taken) ......I get a message from our Airbnb host,
