by RobertTownsend | Dec 31, 2019 | Deception
Happy New Year’s Eve at 0700 from the Bar de la Poste, Semur-en-Auxios, Burgundy, France. The Bar de la Poste is the only coffee house-brasserie open at 0700 mornings in this section of Burgundy and here I am. But, the brasserie has a quite acceptable cafe au...
by RobertTownsend | Nov 9, 2019 | Book Reviews, Family, Germany
On 16-17 October, The United States Holocaust Museum sponsored Patrice’s 89-year-old Uncle Kurt Maier, Emeritus Librarian, Library of Congress (German collection), lectures at Chicago’s Harold Washington Library. Kurt, a Holocaust survivor with a wicked...
by RobertTownsend | Sep 22, 2019 | Family
Honor Flight September 1, 2019 -- Northern Wisconsin On Labor Day week-end, 2019 I joined 200+ veterans and guardians on the local Honor Flight To Washington, D.C. I went grudgingly… Marcia, my daughter, had long ago signed me up. Patrice, my wife, more or less...
by RobertTownsend | Sep 1, 2019 | Deception
Observation tower and portion of medieval Semur-en-Auxios defensive wall. Patrice and I are moving this November (2019) to Semur-en-Auxios., near Dijon, in Burgundy, France. Why? Because we can. We are retired, squared away, and I speak French. And, as opposed to...
by RobertTownsend | Nov 9, 2017 | Book Reviews, Deception
Professor and historian Jeremi Suri’s The Impossible Presidency shines. Neither ornate nor prosaic, his words are well-chosen, his metaphors apt, the construction of the argument convincing (to me, at least). A previous work, Kissinger, rests on my desks...
by RobertTownsend | Oct 28, 2017 | Family
I am a hard case for the homilists of Holy Wisdom, the Benedictine Monastery, Madison, Wisconsin, where I attend mass. I tend to zone out. However, the first reading during last week’s mass, Numbers 27:1-11. caught my attention. Here, before Moses, the daughters...