History society banquet was quite unusual—in food, that is. An entire smoked quail! Turtle soup! Veal! But generally good. The turtle soup had a lemon-lie taste, but that may have been the recipe, not the turtle. Lots of people didn’t eat it.

I sat next to a beautiful blonde undergraduate, originally from Liverpool, proud of her affirmation to socialism who didn’t join the toast of the queen, and was embarrassed to be at this big feast as a socialist. Sort of an interesting conversation but I had the distinct feeling she was dying to get away. Oh, well. What can you expect from a 19-year-old. I haven’t seen her again since, but I have the feeling I’ll be lucky if she even says hi. It was one of those “non-acquaintance” conversations—you know, when you chat with someone one time then, the next time you see them, they’ve forgotten you exist? Ah, well.

—March 9, 1988, Cambridge

A short pause to write here before I begin working on final examinations for Visual Communications—68 people in the course. The worst part about teaching (and this comment no doubt echoes through history) is grading. One learns that, like taking distasteful medicine, it’s best to get it over and out of the way quickly.

I have a particularly difficult time with grading. I feel sorry for people and tend to give higher grades than they really deserve. This is unfair to them—it gives them false hopes about their progress and abilities—and unfair to those who have worked hard. Most people who do poorly are not dumb, but lack discipline.

Rick at Promersberger Co. called me again last week to see how teaching was going, and to “remember to keep us in mid-June after your contract with Moorhead State runs out—you’re not going to continue your ‘noble’ teaching are you?” That’s the perception of the industry—teaching college students is noble but not very logical for professionals who should be “out in the field making some real money.” Nevertheless, I feel I’d like to return for more study and that makes teaching the most logical choice. Why go on for more school? Well, I feel drive to DO something during this short time on earth we are all given—don’t just let life slip away from you, but take control, act, move, set a goal, a challenge. To just get married and put in your time and let life slip by seems all too gray for me. But is more education the answer? Well, it’s a challenge for me—at least right now. And I enjoy learning.

Each person must find meaning somewhere in his life—a direction, a devotion, a place to put energies. For some it’s God, the afterlife—but no matter how much I listen to them, I still can’t find it in me to believe that this life on earth should be lived solely to the glory and praise of the Lord. Whether there really is a God we don’t know—we rely on faith. How he wants us to live in this world we don’t know—we rely on writings of  humans supposedly inspired by him and, of course, what “inspiration” you listen to depends on what religion you believe in).

—March 1, 1986, Moorhead.

Today’s work at the Forum marked the last of what has now been my fifth job with that organization. Not one of them was permanent. I am led to despondence at the prospect of being without employment again, and frustrated with the tedium of living at home. I wish something would come up to solve all these annoyances. I have sent inquiries to Amity International and other organizations offering language study opportunities in France, hoping I could find something I could afford. I have as well even written to the Coventry Evening Telegraph about their program of allowing American journalists to work there a year.

It is unfortunate that these months are not shaping up as I had hoped while in England, but one cannot always count on the best of luck, and I’ve had more than my share of luck in the past.

I sometimes believe I should move right back to begin work on my doctorate, but I am dissuaded by two things: where will the money come from? Will a doctorate-degree holder without experience in a liberal arts field by hurt or helped by his advanced degree? Will he be “over-educated” to find employment, considering that already only 1 of 6 history PhDs have employment in that field?

I am meanwhile growing increasingly uneasy about my reticence to return to the writing and researching I had planned to pursue. One does not get things published on daydreams—or long observations in one’s journal. I must break myself into a routine which takes the necessity of this writing into consideration soon.

—February 19, 1981, Moorhead

I was tense and fatigued last week, so it was great to begin swimming again tonight! Stéphane kids me about being fat around the stomach! But I think he’s scrawny. So there….

It occurred to me as I was hopping in a “grande surface” (supermarket) that one reason the little fruit and vegetable sellers thrive in France is service. At your average supermarket, a sullen checkout girl with six rings on each finger and orange hair throws you some plastic sacks, and you furiously bag your groceries after they’ve been run up—you never keep up—then dig out the cash while she waits, then take your change, stuff it in any pocket, go back to bagging, while the next customer is already crowding you, his stuff pushing into yours, your arm falling off from having waited in line 20 minutes…Now and then I see old folks trying this, and they seem to get so frustrated—they can hardly move fast enough, if young people can’t.

At the little stores you tell the person what you want, he or she goes and gets it for you,  weighs it, puts it in the bag, and says “good-bye.” Sure, you have to go to 10 little stores to get everything you want, but I can see that for especially older people, it’s well worth it.

Why didn’t little stores work in the States? One, because our “convenience stores” don’t offer bagging and carrying service. Little stores did less, big stores do more, and it makes a difference as they meet in the middle…I still think it’s sad the old neighborhood stores are about gone in the States—they thrive here—where people knew you, you could chat with the owner, but partially, too, it takes a heavily concentrated urban population to make it work. New York, I have no doubt, still has the little stores.

On the other hand, “impersonal” convenience stores and supermarkets  give high school and college kids part-time jobs—here such part-time jobs are a lot more difficult to find. Of course, here you don’t have as many people needing part-time jobs, because you don’t have pay-as-you-go universities. Like cogs in the wheel, a society works out sectors to fit together… It’s when you try to import one wheel from one country to another that gears don’t mesh and society breaks down…. For instance, how do you import a pay-as-you-go university system from the U.S. to England or France, without the accompanying societal structures that make it work? Yet that’s what the ministers of education in both countries would like to do.

—Feb. 13, 1989, Marseille, France

Now they’re talking to me about break-ins in houses where they didn’t close the shutters on the second floor—I knew she’d get around to admitting that, sooner or later, to push me into closing these damned things. So, I suppose…. Some things I just don’t really get used to, retain my old American ways—I still eat cheese with the meal, can’t think of it as dessert, and prefer to drink my coffee with a dessert….still eat earlier than everyone else, although 7:30 for me is still late….still think all this opening and closing of shutters is a damned nuisance…still take a shower every morning (luckily it’s not a French tradition, so I never have a problem getting into the bathroom)…still hate their cold bedrooms and wonder if the French don’t sell higher wattage desk lightbulbs, or what? Some habits die harder than others—I can adapt if I’m forced to, but given a choice, I slip back.

—Feb. 5, 1989, Marseille, France

I found a book on Paris cafes at a museum gift shop, so looked up the address of Le Procope, Paris’ oldest cafe (1688). I was at my wit’s end trying to find an address. It’s not in the telephone directory, that book seemingly useless for finding business addresses, or even phone information—there’s no indication of prefixes for calls to cities out of Paris. Tour guide had nothing. But today I found it, 16 rue Vieux Comedies, just down from rue Dauphine in the Latin Quarter, over the Pont Neuf.

After making a couple wrong walking turns, I finally reached the old place. Placed next to the window, I ordered a beer and took in the ornate ancien regime decor. Upstairs are rooms and oil portraits. I really could imagine Ben Franklin eating here, or Voltaire, or the boys of the Revolution. Maybe even Napoleon. Okay, so the beer was nearly 5 e [euros], but the dinner menu looked reasonable enough, so I may be back.

This checks off the third of my visits to famous cafes. Cafe du Croissant, in the old press district, site of Jean Jaurés assassination. Clearly no tourist hangout. Nobody outside of France knows who Jaurés was. Second, Cafe de Flore, at the famed St. Germain de Pres corner. Jammed with tourists who prefer celebrities, even philosophers like Sartre. Procope was hardly full at all. Tourists prefer celebrities to history, even if people like Ben Franklin were celebrities once. Probably in 200 years Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir also will be so antique that their cafe won’t be of much interest, if still serving those expensive beverages.

—March 20, 2005, Paris

I’m here in the office, after having put away my new stamp: C2, airmail. After lo, these many years, I’m still accumulating additions to my stamp collection. I’ve focused on U.S. for at least 15 years, though. I used to buy a stamp a month, but now I can’t afford that. The money goes down the ol’ house rathole.

I never realized just how expensive it is to own a house. If I were in this house on my salary alone ($31,000, about) the only way I could afford it would be to sell my car, buy an old $500 model, and go nowhere, do nothing, buy nothing. As it is we have little savings, though I’m managing to put away $100 a paycheck into retirement and after next fall, my car will be paid off—like an instant 10% salary increase! If I keep this car as long as I kept the 72 Chevy, I should be able to save lots n’ lots.

I’d like to return to investing in the stock market—I had a little invested in the early 80s, but that all went to Cambridge education, along with my retirement from MSU, savings, all my summer employment money, and even then, a loan from my mother. Well, $50,000, that education cost. I paid about half; scholarship, grants, fellowships picked up the other half. About $14,000 alone came from Rotary Foundation. I’ve been lucky. Not many people not somehow independently wealthy can afford Cambridge—though it’s no more costly than Ivy League schools, perhaps less costly than some.

—March 2, 1997, Fargo

I made a walk through the Marais, just north of the Hotel de Ville, and west of Place Bastille. It’s the “mansion district” of Paris, built of “hotels particuliers” build in the late 1500s to 1600s when the Marais was fashionable, grand stone edifices looking into courtyards or gardens. Some are open. The Carnavelet is the museum of Paris—I’ve been there at least once, possibly twice. Closed Mondays. But I’d missed the Place de Vosges just to the east. The square of cloistered pink brick buildings was once a royal parade ground, now a public park. Most of the shops in the cloisters sell fine art, a good share of it sculpture. A couple cafes. Victor Hugo’s house, closed Mondays, apparently.

A short walk east and slightly south is the enormous Place de la Bastille, with no Bastille, but a column commemorating the rebellion that led to the July Monarchy, 1830. My bet is that one tourist in a hundred knows what the 1830 revolution was. Sidewalks surround the column, with writing on all sides, but you can’t actually get there—without crossing some four lanes of roundabout traffic, and no crosswalk. The new Paris opera is modern and chromed, sticks out as all modern buildings do in Paris, but this city never wants to look old (London, on the other hand, rather does want to). Supposedly stone markers show where the original Bastille stood. I’ve looked for these before, without success. This time I made a determined effort. I walked around the entire square (crossing about nine intersections), determined to find those markings. I thought I found some. Turned out to be the markings for vehicles stopped at red lights. I never did find that outline. Apparently it’s there, as all the tour guides talk about it.

A short walk down Henry IV Boulevard brings you to the Pont Sully at the east end of Ile St. Louis, then Pont Marie, and there you are at St. Germain and the World Arab Institute. The Marais walk is worth the time, for sure, and even more so had more places been open, but it does remind me a little of walking the college circuit at Cambridge. The style and opulence reflect the age. Cambridge really does kind of spoil a person.

—Feb. 21, 2005, Paris

The “multi-media” presentation is nearly ready. I plan to demonstrate at the faculty meeting next Wednesday. Some of—more than half, actually—the faculty didn’t return their bio sketches to me with corrections. So I assume they’re OK. Of course, I’ll probably make about 20 copies of the program, send it out to all and sundry, then hear, “wait—mine isn’t right!”

I don’t know why I’m getting myself into the dep’t. promotion game anyway. Not my job. But…I just can’t seem to get away from being a practitioner to being a “scholar.”

Gotta get to work on that article!

I also completed a 2-page newsletter to mail to all my advisees, many of whom don’t even know me, since we have “group advising” in our dep’t. (that is, no real advising at all). I don’t plan to tell anyone about this project. It’ll get around anyway, and if I begin to crow about this, I’d likely raise faculty hackles for my “one-upmanship.” No need to alienate your colleagues by being too enthusiastic….. In fact, they probably are already alienated, the insecure ones. That’s most of the dept.’ Kid Ph.D.s. Sheesh.

Julie and I had this morning what Julie termed our first “owly morning.” She accused me of being grumpy because I said we were frequently out of yogurt, bagels, orange juice—or that the orange juice was perpetually frozen because her refrigerator is kaput and the landlords won’t replace it. She got mad at that accusation, and I realize I’d not been particularly diplomatic, so I retraced, recanted. Of course, it really is true—nearly every week she’s out of something, or the O.J. is frozen (when we have any). But then: I guess it’s really my responsibility to provision my own breakfast anyway.

—Feb. 3, 1994, Fargo

A reminder that this is Marseille, “The French Connection.” You begin to feel secure…but you’re not quite.

It was about 1:30 a.m. I was just getting to sleep when I heard several great thumps at the locked door to the hotel 5 floors below. The management locks the massive door in the evening, but guests have keys.

Finally someone opened the door. I heard words. Then someone climbed the stairs to this floor. I heard a sharp knock on my door.

I didn’t answer. Usually, I don’t answer the door after about 11, and I don’t answer the telephone after midnight. Nothing, I feel, is that important. But this was especially sinister.

The man wen to several of the other doors on this floor, then back to mine, and knocked once more.

“C’est qui?” I shouted.

No response.

“C’est qui?” I shouted, walking toward the door. I hear the doorknob turn—he was trying to get into the room! Luckily, I never leave room doors open in apartments or hotel rooms, ever.

“Someone wants to talk to you downstairs,” he said.

“It’s not possible,” I said. “I know no one in Marseille. It’s not possible,” I repeated.

I heard no more…but after a while the person left.

Clearly I was being mistaken for someone else. But the episode sounded like a scene from a spy novel…very mysterious…. Now what if I had opened the door? Foolish? Or what if I’d forgotten to lock it? There’s just no room for sloppiness or trusting souls in a major city, Marseille, or any other, no matter where you’re staying. When I walk alone in a major city on the streets, I walk fast, don’t make eye contact with anyone, and put on my most grim, scary expression. I don’t get many admirers. But so far, it’s kept me from any major confrontation, either.

There is much to be said for the safety for Midwestern America, although, frankly , you’re probably just as unsafe in a city like Minneapolis as in Marseille. They shoot poeple in Minneapolis, for instance.

— Marseille, France, Oct. 16, 1988