more school skipping (Marilyn from Saturday)

dear folks -

lest anyone think carter is above playing a bit of hooky, you should know that carter didn't go to soccer one afternoon this week and he slept in on friday morning and spent the day with his old granny.

carter is a superb tour guide. he knows a lot about the city, knows the metro better than he knows the palm of his own hand, is always enthusiastic about everything and is a packhorse about carrying anything at all. carter is a terrific kid.

because i am halt, lame and impatient, we carefully choose where, when and how we'll go. we went to the museum of decorative arts in the louvre palace. it's a perfect little museum. just the right size and with an intriguing and delightful collection. with the louvre collection itself and a trendy (underground) shopping mall not a stone's throw away, we had no lines or crowds with which to contend.

one might wonder what decorative arts are. pretty much everything but painting. including furniture, glassware, pottery, metalwork, and interior design. the decorative arts collection includes all sorts of things which were - in their day - wonderfully modern. everything from art nouveau and art deco to the plastic and cardboard stuff one can get today. the boys really like the collection of chairs, some of which can be sunk into, perched upon and enjoyed.

carter and i also went to the pantheon. the building itself is nice enough, but we both liked the crypt a lot. as carter noted, it doesn't smell as much like rotting old bones as some crypts. in fact, it had a counterintuitive open spaciousness. a veritable pantheon of french notables are entombed in the crypt. braille, zola, marie curie, voltaire, j. j. rousseau and victor hugo.

then we went to the luxembourg gardens. what a delicious spot. the formal gardens are formal in that they are in regular geometric shapes, but the flowers are so lively and fanciful. tall and graceful stems at the centers, surrounded by beautifully balanced arrays of colors which are trimly bordered by bright ground hugging blossoms.

other paths meander in and out of wooded patches with marvelous trees. there are huge expanses of pollarded chestnuts with their old limbs neatly clipped into long, straight rows to create columns of sunlight and shadow.

ponds, tennis courts, playgrounds and whatever complete the park.

it is hard to imagine why carter doesn't skip school a wholelotmore than he does.

love,

m