It’s official. Summer is over. The traffic was murder over the weekend (or so I heard). People are back in their offices and the shops are all open for business. School starts Wednesday for the big kids, Thursday for the little ones. New notebooks, pencils, backpacks, school shoes, the works. The guys living on the [...]

Back from three weeks with the in-laws in the Southwest. Doing the summer thang, French style. Which, if you are married, generally consists of going out into some idyllic French countryside where inevitably there is an old house that once belonged to great-great-uncle Gaston’s cousin’s niece. Up until somewhere in the 20th century, the French [...]

The contributors to the Send Lucy to Paris Fund are getting creative. A fellow Francophile, Ginger (despite being Italian herself), sent Lucy a 10-euro note with a postcard of Paris written in French. We’ll see how well Lucy does with translation. A West Hollywood store called Veno Kado (it sells wine and gifts—get it?) mailed [...]

 
Coincidence? The latest photo Lucy’s mother sent me has the little girl dressed in a sweater not unlike the classic French fisherman style embraced by Jean Paul Gaultier, one of France’s greatest fashion designers. Keep in mind, people, that this girl lives in Kentucky, and is not (yet) under the total influence of her maniacly [...]

The Send Lucy to Paris fund is growing! We had a most touching contribution from Ben, Lucy’s 4-year-old brother. He brought her two $2 bills from his piggy bank and gave a hug on top of it. I don’t remember that kind of generosity between me and Lucy’s mother, who is my sister. In fact, [...]

  
My niece in Northern Kentucky has a burning desire.
“Dear Aunt Laurie,” she wrote when she was 5 years old.  “Will you bring me to Paris with you?” 
After reading the upper-case scrawl, I called Lucy’s mother.
“What a cute letter!” I said.
“What letter?” her mother replied.
Just as no one knows exactly how Lucy got the letter mailed, there [...]