Hit The Road, Hans

German soldier on the quay in Bordeaux in 1940

             

            August 28 in Bordeaux at exactly 11 a.m., they rang the Grosse Cloche, the Big Bell. This was an experience for us for a couple of reasons. First, it proved that they really can be on time here - the sonnerie was announced for 11 and that huge bell started swinging right on the tick.  And we were proud to be involved, even if only as spectators, in commemorating the day in 1944 that Bordeaux ended four years of German occupation. This is not something Americans know much about.

Gummi Puppen?

This post is dedicated to the memory of a friend.

            A long time ago I abandoned the idea of ever making any money writing or that anything I had to say was of much interest to anyone. This blog is evidence of that, more or less. Despite this I always write with the idea of trying to please some unknown someone (writing for your readers) but this one is for me. I have nothing more in mind than pleasing myself as I remember a dear friend whose worth to me became even more apparent after he'd gone. So I'm warning you now that this post has a bunch of video clips attached to it and I have no idea how it'll turn out. The idea occurred to me sometime before June as we were approaching the 70th anniversary of D-Day but between travel and preparing a presentation on the trombone for Bordeaux-USA, I'm only getting around to it now. In putting together my trombone project, I learned how to use Imovie and went a little nuts making videos. The same thing happened again and for the past week or so, I've been working on clips to stick into this post.