Chez de Chambost

We had a nice, restful day in the countryside (near Paris) and a lovely BBQ dinner with Emmanuel and Michelle de Chambost. Emmanuel designed the ion optics on the 1270
ion microprobe (serial #1 at UCLA) and we had the pleasure of visiting him, with Mom Meeker, in 1992. He also visited us in 1995 in Oak Park, and it was funny to think that Kathleen wasn't around for either visit. We had salad and fruit from their garden and a very nice magret de canard cooked over coals; Kathleen was excited to see the cheese tray come out after dinner - she is turning into a bit of a connoisseur. After dinner they drove us back into Paris where the fete de la musique was going on all night. Thousands and thousands of people wandering around the Trocadero and Eiffel Tower. There are many bandstands set up in the neighborhoods as well with people crowding the streets and dancing. In typical French style, however, the street isn't really blocked off and occasionally buses, cars, and scooters make their way through the dancing mob. Loosely organized, borderline chaos - the way the French like it!

Work... Work.... Work....

For a while now, I've thought that I should add a few words about some interesting results that we've obtained in the UCLA MegaSIMS lab. The "MegaSIMS" is the new million-volt mass spectrometer that Kevin and his colleagues have designed and assembled for the GENESIS mission to measure the isotopic composition of the solar wind. There is actually a little bit of the Sun (literally!) in the lab at UCLA and we have been working to determine the relative abundances of the three isotopes of oxygen (16-O, 17-O, and 18-O) which will tell us something about how the planets formed from the original swirling mass of gas and dust that we call the "solar nebula". How that works is a bit complicated, but you can hear more about it (if you want - it's at least 20 minutes long) at this podcast, which is from an interview that Kevin gave following an astrophysics seminar at the University of Manchester (broadcast at jodcast - an astronomy podcasting site at UM, created "by a bunch of astronomers for anyone who is interested in things out of this world").

Our first results indicate that the Earth and all the planets of the inner solar system (at least) are fundamentally different than the Sun, which must represent the average composition of the original starting material. The difference is due to a major chemical processing that happened (probably) just before the accretion of planetary materials. Since oxygen is the most abundant element in rocky planets like Earth, this is a big deal. Kevin presented these data at a well-attended talk at the Lunar & Planetary Science Conference in Houston in March and the story was picked up by several high-profile science magazines as well as the BBC and a few other places. He has also lectured about these results a couple of times in France, as well as England, and last weekend in Wisconsin. There are a few loose ends to be tied up, but the first detailed paper ought to be submitted for publication by early fall.

Well- that's enough work for now; after all, it is Friday night!

au revoir à l'école

Tomorrow is le dernier jour for Kathleen at EABJM, except for a play on Monday. The teachers are busily engaged with exit exams for the high school students and so there is no real curriculum planned for the next 2 weeks. So, it was decided at family council that Kathleen's time would be better spent cruising around Paris with her new buddies than being babysat all day. They have put together nice plans and hopefully I'll have them blog some of their adventures ... so stay tuned! In the meantime, I detected a note of sadness today when I mentioned something like 'last school night' after dinner - it has been a good experience that, I suppose we all realize, will not be repeated. Bonne nuit.

Tu peux garder un secret?

Bonjour from Paris! A huge gap has occurred in our blogging efforts and it is entirely my fault! We have just ended a rather long stretch of either visitors or travel and I have failed to keep up the blog! Thankfully, Kevin and Mark jumped in and blogged for me but they missed a very important visit. A day or so after returning from our travels in England and Ireland we received a much anticipated visit from Kathleen’s very best friends, the Gordons. Some of us knew about and anticipated this visit much longer than others as it was kept a secret from the girls until after Becca and Rachel’s B’not mitzvah.

When you visit Paris in the spring you must have two plans for each day…what to do if it is sunny and what to do if it is rainy. During the Gordon’s visit we had a wonderful week and a half of beautiful Paris weather (with only an occasional rain shower at night and on the last day)! There was no need for a plan B, although we did choose on many occasions to move at a leisurely pace….some of us were on vacation! The gardens were in full bloom as the pictures in Kevin’s slide show demonstrate.

Our train ride out to Giverny was beautiful! First, a train ride through the lovely green countryside. Next, a bicycle ride along an old train bed (some of us were going so fast that they did not even notice the quaint country cottages and beautiful flower beds!). Last, we were rewarded by a gorgeously maintained and well planted garden that inspired Monet towards many of his masterpieces! Some of us were even caught trying to imitate the artist near the serene lily pond.

Other highlights of their visit were: the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, crepes, the Luxembourg garden, crepes, playing on a big chess board, not going to Euro Disney!, cafes, crepes, pastries, sleepovers, the Louvre Museum, the Jardin des Plantes, the Zoo, the bones, crepes, having the girls meet Kathleen’s Paris school friends, pastries, bread, getting portraits done by the great grandson of Leonardo de Vinci (maybe??????!!!!... he really caught an interesting expression on the girls faces!....maybe they will be famous some day!), sleepovers, train rides, Harold not checking his email (I was very impressed!), crepes, pastries, and bread! The crepes, pastries, and bread were a huge success! There were many other typical Paris sights thrown in as well!

Some of the fun (and not so fun) mishaps were: those lovely pastries which ended up upside down in the metro station (they remained in their bag and still tasted delicious!), the Catecombs being closed the first time (the crepes we had instead were delicious and the Luxemborg gardens were fun), Becca doing a face plant in said gardens (she was fine although her pride was a little bruised), being unable to visit Marie Antoinette’s little hamlet because we arrived too late (maybe it was the ice cream cones we stopped for on our way there?), the elderly gentleman, whom Marcia and I thought was just being strange but who ended up having a seizure on the Champs Elysee (thanks Harold for being so calm and collected…you should work with children…oh you already do!), Rachel testing her parents handling of an allergic reaction (thankfully, Rachel is fine and they had everything necessary to handle the situation including a very nice French pharmacy employee who pointed the way to the nearest hospital and made sure they were alright), Becca wading through water in her shoes, everyone getting drenched trying to find shelter in a down pour at the Zoo, saying good-bye until August.

Thanks Becca, Rachel, Marcia, and Harold for coming to Paris!

au revoir Mendenhalls

We are happy to report that the Mendenhalls survived Paris ..... and vice-versa. We had a wonderful visit with Mark and Mary (excuse-moi .... Mare) and they are today visiting the canals of Amsterdam. Highlights of the week included some of the must-do's (Notre Dame, St. Chapelle, Montmartre, Louvre, Tour Eiffel...) and a few cultural excursions. Along the lines of the latter, shopping at the Sunday market followed by a visit to the 7000-pipe organ of St. Sulpice was fun - especially when the shopping resulted in a late afternoon feast. St. Sulpice is an interesting cathedral for its art (Delacroix) and astronomy and da Vinci code references ("rose line"), but the highlight is being invited up into the organ to watch a master play for the Mass and afterwards. Here you see him sharing a laugh with a fellow keyboard player. An evening stroll through the Musee Rodin (free because of 1st Sunday in June!) and its gardens helped work off the excesses of the extended brunch. In fact, our intrepid travelers did much walking around Paris, and even at the labyrinth at the cathedral at Chartres.

With the departure of Mark & Mary, we have no more visitors scheduled.... and all of a sudden it looks like our time in Paris will wind down quickly. Kathleen has only 2 weeks left in school and Kevin goes on a quick (6-day) trip to the States. First, it's to UCLA for Ming-Chang's thesis defense and then returning to France via a 2-day meeting in Madison, Wisconsin. At LAX, Kevin will be picked up by Megan who will soon be home for the summer. Hey, someone has to go to work!

---- Check out the newly posted slide shows ----- and watch for more updates to come!

Back to the Blog

Finally.... I've managed to upload a few new photos. The SpringTime in Paris scenes are from our local garden, the national garden (Jardin des Plantes - right where Kevin works), a nearby park, and our day trip to Giverny with the Gordons. More on that and other fun times with that special visit soon. If you scroll down, you might also find a few more additions to the previous couple of postings. More coming soon.....

Special Guest Blog

Bonjour bloggees !

Monsieur McKeegan has graciously consented to let me fill in the blog for a day or two.
That is unless I’m too boring ..Name an eight letter word for “inhabitants” . If you answer correctly ,there’ll be a prize for you ,crossword puzzlers ,donated of course by Kevin , I’m thinking a pair of those earphones the Airlines give you for movies … Yes, here we are with the McKeegans working a book of fifty crossword puzzles by night and riding the Paris Metro by day.

How totally fun and relaxing! To all of you who live in Oak Park, a warm and hearty hello. If you blog ,Skip, the above question is for you. The weather here in Paris is about as perfect as one can ask for- 16-20 degree C ,no burning days, perfect walking temp.

My wife, Mary, has decided we could live on crepes. She’s undergoing changes to all of you who know her out there and has decided her name is now “Màré”. I’m not sure she knows who I am anymore but that’s another story.

We really enjoy going out with Grace or Monsieur “Kevìn” shopping for dinner. As Grace said,”We’re zigzagging our way home”. One store prosciutto, one store fromage, one store “le vin”and on and on……and on – really rather fun. I told a lady I spoke Farsi today and she rattled off to me for a while … breaking off from her was a bit difficult but I think we both enjoyed our “conversation” nevertheless. All part of the Parisian experience. If there’s a real antipathy towards Americans here I have yet to feel it and I would heartily encourage anyone out there considering a visit to come and enjoy. The McKeegan’s apt. is cozy. Nighttime is spent at dinner, conversation, reading and “blogging”.

The River Seine seems to spend a great deal of time being the key reference point to all walkers. If one is able to find her, figure out what way you’re going ,then just continue walking, one can see a great deal of Paris. What can I say about the shops .Viola! Mary –a.k.a. “Mare” has met many fun, helpful, people. The lady at the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school was a case in point . Australian by birth , she shucked her perfect French to talk to us in English, selling Mare some cards for Bridge in the process. Speaking of bridge, can someone out there definitively explain to me why it is bad to bid one no-trump with a singleton ace and honors in the other three suits ? Could be another pair of earphones for this one . Monsieur Richard Gallivan did it and went down to stunning defeat when his partner showed a paucity of pts. Enough of bridge. I must save my really brilliant material for later. How do y’all know –I could just start writing boilerplate from Oak Park , Ca . Do you think it would take a ph.d to catch me ?

Love and keep blogging—Mark and “Mare”