Bastille Day and Other News...

One of the more curious aspects of the blogosphere is that the less you post, it seems, the more they come. It's been three weeks since your scribe has posted, and in the interim his visitor stats and page views have kept hitting new highs almost daily. Is this a way of encouraging him to keep his mouth shut?

Whatever, he now feels it is time to post again, and thus, nothing daunted, off we go. Today in front of Town Hall the French Tricolore was raised next to the Stars and Stripes and the Green Monster...er, the flag of the Burg of Greenwich, that is. About thirty people gathered in the light drizzle, where we were addressed by Mme. Chantal Chauvin, the adjunct Consul General of France in New York. This is the fourth year she has been with us, and one hopes she is beginning to view Greenwich as her second home in the United States. She gets up at 5 a.m. to be sure of making it here by 8.

This year she added a new twist to the ceremony when she presented the medal of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour to local resident Bill Frick of Riverside. Sixty-four years ago then-Lieutenant Frick was making his way from Utah Beach to Alsace, collecting Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars along the way. Mme. Chantal brought tears to our eyes with her Gallic eloquence as she recalled, step by step, the battles in which he fought across her country. She made it clear that France and her citizens are eternally grateful for the valor and sacrifice of the young Americans who liberated them from the Nazis at the end of World War II. "Many of those heroes lie forever in French soil," she reminded us. Then she pinned the gorgeous medal on Lt. Frick's shirtfront while we all clapped.

Members of the Greenwich Choral Society, newly-returned from our sister city of Vienne, formerly part of the kingdom of Provence, led us in singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "La Marseilleise". Vienne, as you may recall, was where the tradition of regarding Friday the 13th as bad luck originated, as it was at a council held there that Pope Clement V ceremoniously abolished the order of the Knights Templar, most of whom had already been rounded up, tortured, and killed in a suprise purge carried out all across France on October 13, 1307. Both the pope and the King of France were envious of the enormous weath of the Templars, whom some regard as the founders of the modern banking system, and eventually the temptation became too great. Their assets were parceled out between pope and king, and the rest, as they say, is history. Except for Dan Brown's recent follow-up, of course.

Then it was off to breakfast at Jean-Louis. Orange juice, cafe, croissants, pain au chocolat - yum. Your scribe told the French citizens there that there is an old tradition that goodies consumed at breakfast on July 14 have no calories, which they were all most happy to hear. First Selectman Peter Tesei was there, with wife Jill and daughter Caroline. Also belatedly present was Ed Krumeich, of Alsatian extraction, who as faithful readers of this column know is running for State Rep from Greenwich. (See 5/14/2008 11:20:00 AM.) Mme. Chauvin complimented Ed on his fine singing voice. Maybe he should deliver all his campaign speeches in operatic form?

And then, thus fortified, we all went our separate ways with thanks to our host, Restaurant Jean-Louis - Greenwich, CT. Your scribe wended his way to the library, whence he is writing these words to you.

In conclusion, he wants to share with you one other reason for his recent absence from the blogosphere. For the past two weeks he has been writing non-stop, churning out his first novel. He woke up on a Saturday morning with a story inside him screaming to be written, and it finally wrapped itself up this past Saturday. 80,000 words in 14 days. Some days the pace got as high as 10,000 words a day. Your scribe does not recommend this practice, as most body parts other than the brain and the fingers tend to atrophy. In any case, it's now done, the query letter has been written, and it's all over but the shouting. And the cheering. And the Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize. Time to get a life again.

And now it's off to perambulate Greenwich Avenue to see what else may be happening in our fair...er, drizzly Town today.