Charles is English, Carlos is Spanish...etc.
Paris has always reminded me of Atlanta. Both metropolises sit north of center, not on a coast, commanding the large provincial areas within their political boundaries, and both have a sunny cultured coast to the Southeast. Many may have flown into the capital without ever visiting any other area in the entire state, and most of those visitors are just fine with that.
I've spent a few hours in Paris.
I feel ridiculous even typing that previous sentence. Who flies into Paris to transfer to somewhere else? Who goes there just for a day? Wouldn't anyone stay there at least three days, minimum? Well, not me. I wanted to stay but I didn't have the chance. It was part of a London, Paris, Rome tour, and we did go to all three, but Paris got the short shrift.
Beginning in 1793 and lasting a few years, and then reintroduced again for about two weeks that must have been a head-spinning melange of confusion and missed appointments, more than 60 years later, there was a calendar with weeks of 10 days each in use in France. This calendar was designed to take the mystery out of the calendar and so it used names of real everyday things, like frost, wind, harvest and blossom. Everything was divided up into smaller units of 10.
hautehorlogerie.org
I heard someone discuss "free speech" concerning the Charlie Hebdo incident and I thought about how we in the U.S. think of words and actions as very different things. Yet, words only come about when taking actions- speaking is an action. And it might be good to be more accountable for our words. Why would we be comfortable saying some things only in certain contexts? It's shady to be one way sometimes and another way, another time.
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