Oct 4, 1972

from an old journal
Blois, Chambord, Chenonceau, Loches: Wed, 4 Oct: Sunny! Narrow streets of Blois and on to Chambord. Hunting, boars, furniture of antlers, pheasants, King's beds - short, uniforms, carriages, painting of Louis XIV, weapons, game, photos of hunting and animals, terraces with turrets near by. An age of wealth, waste, opulence et al.

Even the littlest towns have patisserie/boulangerie. A partially toothless lady was cooking lunch and came out to sell me a baguette.

Chenonceau! On the Cher - partly a bridge. Well furnished with huge canopied beds (short), tapestries, painting, super fancy renaissance chests of drawers with ivory inlaid carved legs, etc. A portrait of Louis XIV came encased in a frame of elaborately carved eagles, lions, etc. Supposedly a 4 piece frame. Must learn more about Louis XIV (never did!).

Loches - a rather medieval looking place with a chateau. Our hotel was in an old building or several of them with a café, several courtyards, and stone steps going through an archway up to the places where the rooms are.

Super french-type dinner - service - madame and monsieur kept checking that everything was OK - coq au vin, lapin, truite, onion, leek tartes, fish in creme sauce.... Oh, misery during middle of night.

wierd dream

Last night I had a very bizarre dream about being on a business trip to Paris.

I was in a small boat in the Paris harbor and suddenly two giant helicopters lowered this huge platform next to the coast. This platform had a factory on it that was in operation. I wandered into it but there was no-one there. Then I went for a long walk and ended up on the other side of Paris, again inside a factory. There were many people there some were speaking French and some were speaking English but I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying. I tried to get some food at a food serving place but when I got close to the counter there wasn't any food there and besides I discovered I had no money. I then decided to go back to the center of town, but since there were no signs anywhere I went in the wrong direction and got back to the waterfront. Then I wandered around looking for a bus stop but nothing seemed recognizable and the streets seemed ill defined. I awakened at about this time.

Now all the pieces (except for the Paris coast and the helicopters) relate in some manner to things I've been thinking about recently: some incidents at work in the past, some recent discussion about Bull bureaucracy delaying releasing the Multics source code, business trips to paris, the 1972 trip that was in France that I'm writing about, planning for the spring trip to france, testifying at city council about bus shelters on monday, problems with some local street signage, some discussion at the post office advisory committee that I attended yesterday about people not clearing snow off their sidewalks...