ROBERT TOWNSEND
a series of life story posts
Collegiale de Notre Dame
Semur-en-Auxios, France The weather in France has turned cold, between 30-34F. I hear guffaws all the way from Northern Wisconsin. A blizzard sweeps across the northern plains and into the...
Writing in France
My part of Burgundy(Côte-d'Or) is a landscape of ‘manicured’ rolling hills. The French farmers are meticulous, the crop rows straight ( three harvests a season), the hillsides dotted with white...
The war in Ukraine as observed from Marseille
On 6 October, I met my daughter Marci, and grandson, Joshua, in Marseille. I simply have not the words to describe how happy I was. Perhaps this photo of my ‘doofus’...
Kippenheim
20 September (2022), Rachel Lavin (friend) and Francine Pease (sister), Patrice and I visited Freiburg im Breisgau with a side trip to Patrice's family (father’s side) to their pre-WWII home...
Bonne année
Happy New Year's Eve at 0700 from the Bar de la Poste, Semur-en-Auxios, Burgundy, France. The Bar de la Poste is the only coffee house-brasserie open at 0700 mornings...
Uncle Kurt and Holocaust
On 16-17 October, 2019. The United States Holocaust Museum sponsored Patrice's 89-year-old Uncle Kurt Maier, Emeritus Librarian, Library of Congress (German collection). Kurt, a Holocaust survivor with a wicked...
Semur-en-Auxios, France
Patrice and I are moving this November (2019) to Semur-en-Auxios., near Dijon, in Burgundy, France. Why? Because we can. We are retired, squared away, and I speak French. And, as opposed...
Louts, Predators and Daughters
I am a hard case for the homilists of Holy Wisdom, the Benedictine Monastery, Madison, Wisconsin, where I attend mass. I tend to zone out. However, the first reading during last...
