Chuck Goes Up, Up, Up - the Eiffel Tower

     After seeing the Mona Lisa, Chuck wanted to go--up, up, up.  He was determined not only to see the Eiffel Tower, he wanted to ascend to the top of the tower.  Staked out in our room at the Montparnasse Hotel in Paris, Chuck meowed and meowed.  He scratched on the hotel room door, as if he were a prisoner.  

     It seems that he had run off a photo of the Eiffel Tower and stuffed it in his own personal carry-on bag that he brought with him wherever he traveled.  There was a photo of his twin sister, Ella, of course, in the bag, and now clutched in his paw--a glossy picture of the Eiffel Tower, grandiose in the early morning mist. 

     Where he’d gotten that photo from--I can’t begin to guess, but the longer we stayed in this magical city, the more obsessed Chuck became. 

     Finally, on the last morning we were in Paris we agreed to take him.     

     From our hotel to the tower, we took the subway.  And I might as well admit up front, there is never a good time to visit the Eiffel Tower.  

     This tower of steel is always crowded.

     Open seven days a week, tourists constantly mill about.  Some decide to walk up the over 300 steps to the first level and then another 300 steps to the second level.  We decided to take the lift.  But we had to stand in line for what seemed like an eternity.  

     I decided that if we were there to see the tower, Chuck may as well learn all about it.  I told him that the total height of the tower was equal to an 81 story building in New York and because of the antennas built on top, it was the tallest manmade structure in the world.  

     Chuck wasn’t impressed.

     I told him that it was built to celebrate the centennial of the French revolution.  He rolled his eyes.

     Did he know that the names of 72 scientists were engraved on the tower?  He didn’t care.

     I told Chuck--and I really thought that this cool fact would pique his interest--that it took between fifty and sixty gallons of paint every year to keep the Eiffel Tower looking spiffy.  

     But by now, Chuck was hungry, and all he wanted to know was when we were going to get a snack.

     Finally, we climbed on the lift and began to ascend to the top.  

     I thought Chuck would be excited.  After all, here we were-going higher and higher.  The view of Paris--once we arrived--was one hundred percent guaranteed to be spectacular.

     I was wrong.

     The one thing we didn’t figure on was that the  “Belly Boy” was afraid of heights.  When the elevator clanged to a stop (metaphorically), and we stepped out to take in the sight, Chuck froze.  He began to shake.  The poor kid was frightened to death.  Immediately, he demanded to go back down.

     “Just shut those peepers,” I said.  

     He buried his face in the crook of my arm.

     The good news was that Bob and I enjoyed the loveliest view of Paris.  

     The bad news - Chuck did nothing but complain the entire way back to the hotel.  He ripped up his photo of the Eiffel Tower and swore he would never meow about it again.  

     The big baby!   

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Chuck Asks What Do Moms Really Want on Mother's Day

         Chuck, the rascal cat, and I are home for this Mother’s Day, which gave us plenty of opportunity to observe first hand the commercialization of this day dedicated to mothers all over the world. 

We became curious about how this day came to be. 

Ever since I was born, Mother’s Day has been a celebrated holiday.  

Chuck wanted to know--how did it all get started and when he asked the question, I confessed I had no idea.  

I just assumed we’ve always celebrated Mother’s Day.

Little did I know the irony that lurked beneath this fascinating story . . .

The woman who lobbied for an official Mother’s Day, which became as you well know the second Sunday in May (at least in this country) and then nine years later who became the first major opponent against the abuse of the celebration was Anna Jarvis. 

She began the campaign. She started the celebration of Mother’s Day in 1908 in West Virginia and helped establish it as a national holiday in 1914. By 1920, however, disappointed by the commercial nature of Mother’s Day, she did a complete turnabout. 

She actually began lobbying against the very thing she’d fought so hard to secure. She hated what Mother’s Day had become in six short years. She criticized greeting cards and advocated, for example, the writing of personal letters to your mother.  

But she was fighting a losing cause.

And, therein, lies the irony. 

It seems that the popularity of a holiday is directly proportional to the amount of revenue it can generate for all concerned. Other holidays have come and gone. If they don’t make money, they don’t last.  

Now consider Mother’s Day. The tradition, the protocol is the card and the gift. In fact, in most people’s minds, sending a card/gift is more important than even making an effort to see or talk to your mother.  

Hallmark/American Greeting specialize in the cards.  

Every major store offers their idea of the perfect Mother’s Day gift.

Commercialization of Mother’s Day has hit an all time high and I cringe to think what Anna Jarvis would think if she could see what Mother’s Day has become today.

Top Five Gift Choices:

1 - Flowers or a Plant

2-  Candy, preferably chocolate

3 - Jewelry

4 - A book - cookbooks or gardening books are always popular

5 - Baskets filled with a collection of something usually related to a hobby of some sort - exercise gear, cooking paraphrenalia, make-up, etc., lotions and potions, etc.

But here’s the other ironic thing about Mother’s Day.  What do mothers really want on Mother’s Day?  According to a survey done by Child’s Play Communications as reported in the Huffington Post, after the Do It Yourself gifts, moms actually want an “off duty day.”  The list looks something like this: 

1- Handwritten cards or letters

2- Uninterrupted showers

3- Naps

4- Silence

5- A Day Off

Sadly, when pressed, only three percent of the mothers actually thought they would get any of the things they really wanted. To read the article, hit:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/mothers-day-what-moms-really-want_n_3196191.html?ir=Parents

When I told Chuck all of this, he shook his whiskered face. 

You had to ask, Chuck, you just had to ask!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!   

        Chuck and I wish all the mothers out there get their heart’s desire. 

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Chuck Visits Utah Beach

You can be totally ignorant of the history of World War II, the battles and the larger issues that tumbled the entire world into war, and yet someone can say:

D Day Invasion of German occupied Normandy, France

Your tousled head comes up and you recognize the term and the place and the pivotal moment.  That was Chuck.  That’s what propelled this rascal cat, this world traveller, first to Omaha Beach and then to Utah Beach.  

I’d hinted to Chuck that Utah Beach had it’s own own unique story, which I told him as we headed toward the museum that now commemorates this sacred ground where men sacrificed their lives for freedom. 

When the United States 4th Infantry Division landed on June 6, 1944, they met little resistance from the Germans.  In fact, out of the 23,250 troops who landed, they suffered less than 200 casualties. There were several reasons for this, but I think the most compelling reason was that Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Assistant Commander of the 4th Division, insisted on landing with his troops.  

He was the only general to do so.  He had requested permission to come ashore with his troops several times and been denied, but finally received the OK to his written request.  At 56, he was the oldest soldier to land on Utah Beach, but he wanted to personally lead the attack.  And it was a good thing, too.

Unfortunately, that day the landing craft drifted far south of its objective.  Roosevelt, realizing this fact, was the one who contacted the other commanders and coordinated the attack.  He is famously quoted for saying, “We’ll start the war from here.”  Throughout the day, he pointed almost every regiment to its changed objectives.  For his bravery on the field--which, of course, saved lives--he was awarded the Medal of Honor.  

One of those "saved" lives was J.D. Salinger, who survived that battle and others in the war and returned home to write The Catcher in the Rye, which stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List for thirty weeks. 

I remember reading The Catcher in the Rye and meeting Holden Caulfield for the first time.  I'm sure that I'm one of hundreds of thousands of high school students in America and around the world that were affected in a positive way by Holden Caulfield's story.  

When Chuck and I arrived at the museum and looked at the artifacts, I tipped my hat to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. 

Chuck was impressed, too.  He likes stories where one man's actions make a difference.

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Chuck Visits Code Name Omaha Beach

History is sometimes hard to imagine.  The brutality of it.

Which is why I made the harsh decision to sit my rascal cat, Chuck, down to watch the work of a master craftsman--Steven Spielberg, whose movie, Saving Private Ryan, shows in horrific detail (and, here, I'm talking about the opening 27 minutes) one of the most realistic battle sequences ever filmed--the Allied invasion of Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.

Omaha Beach was the ”code name” for the largest of the five beaches in the German occupied area of Normandy, France
during World War II.  It was the American’s responsibility to take control of the beach.  There were no less than twelve German strongpoints that directed fire on the troops that landed that day as part of the Allied invasion. The casualties were enormous.  In fact, Omaha has been called the “most intensely fought after beach” ever.

The soldiers who lived through the battle have an understanding of what it was like to be on the beach that day.  For the rest of us, we can look at the photos or read the accounts or watch the film.

No one can forget the close-up of the Tom Hanks’ character in the opening minutes, giving last minute orders to his men, as the boat brings them closer and closer to the shore and to the enemy fire and his words, “I’ll see you on the beach,” which rings out like a death sentence. 

Today, the area known as Omaha Beach is more built up, of course.  The towns and villages that surround it have expanded and changed with the passage of time, but the actual geography of the beach remains eerily as it was.  

As Chuck and I walk around this now famous tourist spot, we see the landscape, the inroads that were used by the men when they came in from the beach.  

We see the pill boxes, the concrete dug-in guard posts, equipped with loop holes with which to fire weapons, which still exist.  We see the bunkers. 

The flags of all the liberating countries now fly on the beach.

A sculpture, built in 2004, is dedicated to peace and to the soldiers who fought for the Allies.  We know that 34,000 Allied forces landed on the beach. The casualties numbered 2,400.  

Today, the beach is once again at peace.    

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Chuck Sees Paratrooper on Church Roof in France

To this day a paratrooper hangs off the roof of a church in the small town of Sainte Mere Eglise, Latin for the Church of St. Mary, in Normandy, France. 

He’s been hanging there for a long time. 

He’s not real, of course. The fake paratrooper is a memorial to the real paratrooper, John M. Steele, whose parachute became caught on the roof spire of the church in town when he landed with a slew of other paratroopers on June 6, 1944.  Their mission was to liberate Sainte Mere Eglise from the Germans.  Trapped on the roof for two hours, pretending to be dead, he watched the battle raging below. He was later captured, but he managed to escape. 

Ironically, he suffered a kinder fate than most of the other paratroopers who landed.  Some were caught on trees and utility poles and were shot before they were cut loose.  Others were sucked into the fires that raged around them.  Casualties were high.

I never considered Chuck, my rascal cat, a history buff, but it’s become clear to me that lately World War II and anything connected to the Second World War holds a certain fascination for him.  We were in France, and Chuck heard of St. Mere Eglise and what happened in that small village on one of the most important days of the war.

Location is everything, and it seems that Sainte Mere Eglise was located smack in the middle of the route that the Germans would have to take in order to launch a counter attack against the Allied troops landing on the Utah and Omaha beaches of Normandy.   

The Allies needed to take the town. Chuck knew the story.  He’d seen the film The Longest Day. 

Chuck wanted to see two things.  First, we went to the church so he could see the paratrooper--the memorial.  

He was impressed.

And then we went inside the church.  He wanted to see the stained glass window.  Here, too, John Steele, is immortalized.  He is one of the two paratroopers landing near the Virgin Mary.  

He was impressed again.

Sainte Mere Eglise was occupied for four years by the Germans,  but after June 6, 1944, it became the first village to be liberated by the Allies.  The people in the town don’t forget.  Tourists still come to see a bit of history.  And Chuck, well, he wanted to see the paratrooper.  

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Chuck Lured to Enigma Machine in France

 

              Chuck can usually be lured to a place he doesn’t want to go by the promise of a pretty girl OR a snack.  This time . . . when we were bound for The Peace Museum - a museum and war memorial in Caen, France - established in 1988, dedicated to peace and considered the best World War II museum in France . . . it was a machine that proved to be the ultimate allure. 

Chuck agreed to visit The Peace Museum because of a promise. Chuck would see one of the actual Enigma machines used by the Allies during World War II at Bletchley Park in England to crack the secret German code used during the transmissions.

It all started the year before when Chuck watched one of my favorite movies -- Enigma, starring Kate Winslet of Titanic fame.  The story of Enigma takes place during World War II in Bletchley Park, England.  A cryptanalyst returns to the park to help the codebreaking team regain their ability to break the German code used during their transmissions. Obsessed with his missing former girlfriend, he and his girlfriend’s roommate help to unravel the mystery of her disappearance.  

Enigma was co-produced by Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones who not only put up the cash to make the movie but also lent the movie use of his Enigma machine to add authenticity to the movie.  

When we arrive at the Museum, I tell Chuck-- be prepared to be wowed by the experience.  I’ve been warned that going through the museum is quite an experience.  Chuck, however, is of one mind.  He only wants to see the machine.  

He doesn’t much listen as I explain that the Peace Museum traces France’s role during World War I and World War II to stop the spread the Fascism and Nazism.  The museum’s displays capture “moments in time.” 

We pass an exhibit of nap sacks, helmets, and leather pouches.  I’m fascinated by this type of display and try to imagine the real people over 50 years ago who owned these objects. 

        We pass a brick wall with a poster and again I try to see myself on a deserted street, perhaps, in Paris, in an occupied city.  

         We pass the side of a building with graffiti and a bicycle, evocative of a, perhaps, secret meeting inside.

There are symbolic exhibits.  The river of red lights stand for all the Holocaust victims.  

When we FINALLY reach the Enigma machine, Chuck stands in rapt attention. He understands that during World War II, because the enemy created an elaborate code where one letter stood for another letter when they transmitted messages, breaking the code without the machine was almost impossible . . . because the possibilities for variations were endless.  

I stare long and hard at the Enigma machine, too.  It saved many Allied lives.  

Yeah, again for technology, even the 1943 style!

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Chuck Misses Wild Partying at Giardini Naxos

If you like hot, you visit Sicily in the summer.  The average temperature in Sicily in July and August demands that you stay at lovely resort villages and spend your days in the water and at the beach. 

On the other hand, we decided to visit Sicily in November when the days were a comfortable 70 degrees Fahrenheit and the nights, well, you needed a jacket or a sweater because it was a bit nippy.

Chuck doesn’t always understand the finer points of weather and appropriate times to travel.  He knew we were staying in Taormina and that nearby was the infamous and  very popular seaside resort town of Giardini Naxos. Although the town used to be a quiet fishing village and before that--dating back to the mid 1500‘s--it even had a history of pirate invasion which is why the Vignazza Tower was built, since the mid 1970’s all that had changed and now it was known for its beaches, panoramic view of the bay and surrounding hills and almost bustling fishing port.  

Giardini Naxos attracts Italians and foreigners in equal numbers, who flock there--looking for accommodations in its hotels and pensions and looking for food in its pubs, restaurants and pizzerias.  

But neither accommodations nor food interested Chuck.  The rascal cat had heard stories of what happened on the beach and he wanted to be there to witness the sight. 

Chuck heard that people pitched tents and partied on the beach.  And then at midnight they ran into the sea for a swim while fireworks crackled overhead in the dark sky.  

Well, who wouldn’t want to see something like that?

Now the story was true all right, but the only problem was that it took place only once a year--on August 15.  We’d missed that date by two months.

August 15 or Ferragosto is very special in the Italian calendar.  It has a rich history and a varied past.  But in the present day, Ferragosto is when most Italians take a short holiday and go to the beach and enjoy a large meal.  It makes sense that they would celebrate on the beach.  

I tried to explain the reality to Chuck, but he wouldn’t listen.  

“What harm can it do?” Bob asked.  “Let the kid see for himself.”

I was hoping that maybe one confused person would set up a tent, but, of course, no one did.  Giardini Naxos is lovely, but in November it is not the same bustling resort area as July and August.  

That evening as we rode back to our hotel in Taormina, I resisted the urge to say, “I told you so.”  The Chuckster looked just too disappointed.  

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