valeriesbookofme

I may not still be awake at midnight, to see the New Year in.  Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not.  Thinking about all my New Year's Eves, I remember an exciting one at My Father's Mustache in Montreal when I was 20, when I was in love and happy and everyone seemed to be the same.  A few very tearful ones later as my then-boyfriend and I tried to figure out our future. That was a long, slow, painful breakup.  A solitary New Year's Eve in Capetown, South Africa where someone tried to break into the house. A man died that night. A New Year's Eve spent flying across the Atlantic, back to England from a holiday with my sister and her family. Landing at Heathrow to the aftermath of a huge snowstorm. Laurie's first New Year's Eve, 1979 into 1980, where my English hosts took me along "first footing" to a neighbor's house.   Our last all-family holiday with my dad, stepmom, sister and her family in Kauai with a New Year's...

There was a recent news article about a Millennial MP in New Zealand replying to one of her fellow MPs: "OK Boomer." I admit that I didn't read the whole exchange or understand what it was about. It was just one of the thousands of news bytes that I passed over in my trolling of the Internet. Until a fellow member of one of my book groups brought it up as we were discussing generational attitudes and tastes.  As a Boomer, born in 1952, I am now three generations away from being "with it" I guess. Since the Boomer generation, those of us born between 1946 and 1964, there have been Gen X, born between 1965 and 1976, Millenials or Gen Y, born between 1977-1995 (my daughter's generation) and, currently, Gen Z, iGen, Centennials, born from 1996 to ??? (my grandchildren's generation.) And the generation that preceded us Boomers is lumped into a category that is called Traditionalists or the Silent Generation, 1945 or before. It's an odd lumping because ...

  I watched the movie “Tolkien” on the plane from Dublin to New York today. Very much a Masterpiece Theatre type movie (I like Masterpiece Theatre.) It was similar to many stories that came out of World War I and Oxford, friendship, loss, explanations for where Tolkien received his inspiration for the battles of Middle Earth, love of trees (Ents), his creation of a whole fantastical language. He studied philology at Oxford. His idea of the Fellowship of the Ring came, according to the movie, from his four friends at Oxford, two of whom died at the Somme. I don’t know how factual the film is, I want to read the reviews of it when I am back on earth. I know the Tolkien family has guarded his legacy quite closely.   45 minutes to go until we land. And another voyage is almost over. Have I learned anything new from this one? Hmmm. I have added another city to my list of favorites, Paris. And that was a bit of a surprise because, while I liked it when I was there in May, this tim...

I saw Laurie and Mercy off at about 11:00 a.m. and then headed down to the Luxembourg Gardens. My Paris Pass was used up--I had only purchased the 4-day Pass--so I decided I would do one paid attraction and that would be Musée d’Orsay. Before going there, however, I did want to see the Luxembourg Gardens.  I missed my girls of course. But I never really mind wandering around by myself. The Gardens were lovely and the day was warm. As I walked down from the Gardens toward the d'Orsay I came across a beautiful old church, Saint Sulpice.   Saint Sulpice was built over an original church from the 13th century. The present church was begun in 1636 and finally "finished" in its present state in the late 1700s although something always seemed to be happening, including a fire in March of 2019 that damaged parts of the church and was apparently arson. 2019 wasn't a good year for Paris churches.  What I found most interesting was...