Parc Montsouris, Paris

When I am in Europe, I like nothing more than to sit quietly in some pleasant city park, soaking in the quiet calm pools near the center of whatever bustling metropolis that I am currently visiting.  I feel like a terribly irresponsible tourist, who should clearly be out experiencing more Important and Significant Cultural Things, but I cannot deny that this is who I seem to be.

Mysterious Parisian tomb

In the midst of every old city, and many new ones, you come across little strange inclusions whose histories are entirely obscure.  In this case, on a little street in the Southern part of Paris, I came across a rather large triangular area of bare grass and dirt with this rather small tomb on a little mound in the middle.  I saw no sign to say what it might be, but it is clearly cared for to some degree, and felt, on this bright summer day, like nothing so much as the resting place of some ancient vampire.

Rooftops of Paris

One of the things I love about Paris is the remarkable architectural unity, much of it due to the renovation led by Haussmann in the latter half of the 19th century.  I'm sure that it was horribly disruptive to life at the time, but a century and a half on it the rooflines make me very happy.

Brussels main square at night

In the center of Brussels is a pedestrian-only main square lined with cafes and the historic civic centers of the city, and on warm summer evenings they sometime play a concert and a light show across the face of the old town hall.

Luxor Obelisk, Paris

In the middle of Paris is a remnant of Napolean's conquest of Egypt, a fragment of an ancient temple gifted to France in the early 19th by an Egyptian ruler trying to navigate the unstable dynamics of modernization unleashed after the shock of French invasion unsettled the Ottoman empire status quo.

Massive Crowds on the Main Drag, Iowa State Fair

Another image from the Iowa State Fair, this one more just giving a feel of the throngs that pack into the area every summer.  Over the course of a week, more than a million people swarm through, enjoying all the various aspects of life and culture on offer there.

Bernie Sanders in the Press Scrum, Iowa State Fair

Apropos of todays' Iowa caucuses, here is a picture I got of Bernie Sanders at the Iowa State Fair this year.  We hadn't actually been thinking about politics when we planned our trip to the fair, but rather about corn-dogs and tractors and music and rides on the midway.  When we arrived, however, Trump was orbiting overhead in his helicopter, and although we missed both him and Clinton, we did hear Sanders speak, and afterward followed the press mob after him. What impressed me visually about this moment was the way that Sanders was virtually cocooned in all the camera and sound equipment that packed in and surrounded him.