Find an article by just clicking on the month in the Archives and then go to the date shown. It is even easier to just type in the first couple of significant words of the title in the search box. Note also the article entitled Alphabet Soup and Numbers to ease your way through the various acronyms, abbreviation and Table of Contents on Tricolors and Cowboy in Paris.

500 … Parcours – The Boulevards of Paris / 7 Oct 2005, PLC
501 … L’oustaou Café – Janis Joplin & the WSJ / 23 Feb 2007, PLC

670 … A Christmas Present / 25 Dec 2009, OC, BIO, BTR
671 … A Small Handicap / 21 Mar 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
672 … A Return to Roots / 21 Mar 2010, OC, EUR, GD
673 … End of the Road / 21 Mar 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
674 … A Change in Emphasis / 22 Apr 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
675 … The First Century / 22 Apr 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
676 … The Second Century / 22 Apr 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
677 … Dawn / 24 May 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
678 … Woman’s Suffrage / 23 July 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
679 … Malta – Fulcrum & Pendulum / 23 July 2010, OC, EUR, GD
680 … Men of the Sea / 7 Aug 2010. OC, EUR, GD
681 … Living History / 7 Aug 2010. OC, EUR, GD
682 … HMS Good Hope / 7 Aug 2010. OC, EUR, GD
683 … A Peninsula Too Far / 7 Aug 2010. OC, EUR, GD

700 … A Fitting End – Independence / 4 Aug 2008, EUS
702 … “Progress Report” / 28 April 2008, SHE
709 … KISS Principle / 28 April 2008, SHE
716 … Crying / 28 April 2008, SHE
718 … Thirty Something Hours / One / 1 June 2008, BIOG
719 … A Happy Hummingbird / 1 June 2008, SHE
721 … End of the Quarter / 1 June 2008, SHE
722 … Off the Scale / 1 June 2008, SHE
723 … Other Kindnesses / 1 June 2008, SHE
724 … The Three that is Four / 7 July 2008, SHE
725 … Thirty Something Hours / Two / 7 July 2008, BIOG
726 … Building Worlds / 7 July 2008, SHE
727 … The Black Toe / 7 July 2008, SHE
728 … The Pictures / 7 July 2008, SHE
732 … The Next Six Months / 4 Aug 2008, SHE
733 … The Good Fight / 4 Aug 2008, SHE
734 … Thirty Something Hours / Three / 4 Aug 2008, BIOG
736 … The Fives – 5 Years, 5 Months, 5 Days / 13 Oct 2008, SHE
738 … Journey Home / 4 Aug 2008, SHE
740 … Thirty Something Hours / Four / 13 Oct 2008, SHE
742 … The Birthday Gift / 12 Nov 2008, SHE
744 … Her Last Visit / 9 Dec 2008, SHE
745 … Three Days Alone / 5 Jan 2009, SHE
746 … My Kind of Hero / 5 Jan 2009, SHE
747 … Some Rules / 5 Jan 2009, SHE
748 … It’s Serendipity or it’s a Sign / 23 Feb 2009, SHE
749 … Save for Saving Her / 23 Feb 2009, SHE
750 … I’m Not Certain Where I’ll Set Yet / 23 Feb 2009, SHE
751 … Thank You All / 23 Feb 2009, SHE
760 … The 21st / 11 May 2009, SHE
761 … How Did She Know? Or Did She? / 11 May 2009, SHE
765 … The Economy / 11 May 2009, SHE
769 … Watching the Worlds from My Windows / 11 May 2009, SHE
770 … On Seeing What Isn’t There / 23 May 2009, SHE
771 … Endings / 23 May 2009, SHE
772 … The Odyssey is Over / 23 May 2009, SHE
773 … Almost Robust / 23 May 2009, SHE
774 … Going Forward / 23 May 2009, SHE
775 … Without Surrender / 11 June 2009
776 … Here, Right Here / 30 July 2009, SHE
778 … Holding Hands / 30 July 2009, SHE
780 … Finally the World Agrees With Me / 30 July 2009, SHE
781 … An Epitaph / 16 Oct 2009, SHE
782 … Contentment & Completions / 16 Oct 2009, SHE
783 … A Free Man of the West – Bill Fisher (1) / 14 Nov 2009, AFW, BIO, BTR
784 … Going with Grace (1) / 14 Nov 2009, AFW, BIO
785 … Going with Grace (2) / 14 Nov 2009, AFW, BIO
786 … A Free Man of the West – Bill Fisher (2) / 14 Nov 2009, AFW, BIO, BTR
787 … Finally a Path / 1 Dec 2009 AFW, SHE, MXD
788 … A Free Man of the West – Bill Fisher (3) / 1 Dec 2009, BIO, BTR
789 … Serendipity / 1 Dec 2009, AFW, SHE, MXD
790 … Time in a Bottle / 1 Dec 2009, AFW, SHE, MXD
792 … Wherever We Are / 25 Dec 2009, OC, SHE, MXD
793 … Healed / 25 Dec 2009, OC, SHE, MXD
794 … Two Years On / 22 Feb 2010, OC, SHE, MXD
795 … Normal / 21 Mar 2010, OC, SHE, MXD
796 … Weekends / 22 Feb 2010, OC, SHE, MXD
797 … 5:06 AM, Paris Time / 22 Feb 2010, OC, SHE, MXD
798 … 3rd Annual BD / 12-14 Apr 2010, OC, NP CIP
799 … I Must Be a Dog / 22 Apr 2010, OC, BIO, BTR

805 … Opposites Aren’t Real / 13 Oct 2008, OAR
807 … Knowledge / 13 Oct 2008, OAR
809 … Caveats / 12 Nov 2008, OAR
810 … Nicholas Cusanus / 1401-1464 / 13 Oct 2008, OAR
811 … Giordano Bruno / 1548-1600 / 13 Oct 2008, OAR
812 … Blaise Pascal / 1623 – 62 / 13 Oct 2008, OAR
814 … Are They or Aren’t They / 12 Nov 2008, OAR
815 … Just Call it Placro / 12 Nov 2008, OAR
816 … Immanuel Kant / 1724-1804 / 13 Oct 2008, OAR
817 … Albert Einstein / 1879-1955 / 13 Oct 2008, OAR
818 … Edward Witten / 1951- / 13 Oct 2008, OAR
820 … The Medium of Light / 9 Dec 2008, OAR
823 … Ode to an Unknown Other / 6 Jan 2009, OAR
824 … Did I Ever Mention / 6 Jan 2009, OAR
825 … More Musings (5) / 23 Feb 2009, OAR
828 … A Plan or a Pipe Dream / 11 May 2009, OAR
829 … Does it Matter / 11 June 2009, OAR
830 … The Mother of all Transitions / 11 June 2009, OAR
831 … Size Counts / 11 June 2009, OAR
832 … Moving Opposites Forward / 11 June 2009, OAR
833 … It All Amounts to Naught / 30 July 2009, OAR
834 … Later Leanings / 30 July 2009, OAR
835 … More Musings 7 / 15 Oct 2009, OAR
836 … Later Leanings 2 / 15 Oct 2009, AFW, OAR
837 … A Special Singularity / 15 Oct 2009, AFW, OAR
838 … The Other Half / 14 Nov 2009, AFW, OAR
839 … The Big Crunch / 22 Jan 2010, OC, OAR, BST
840 … 5 Physicists / 16 Jan 2010, NO CIP
841 … Predictions / 22 Jan 2010, OC, OAR, BST
842 … Real Science / 22 Jan 2010, OC, OAR, BST
843 … Origins of an Opposite / 22 Jan 2010, OC, OAR, BST
844 … Hypothetical Musings / 22 Feb 2010, OC, OAR, BST
845 … An Odd Number / 22 Feb 2010, OC, OAR, BST
846 … A Fudge Factor / 21 Mar 2010, OC, OAR, BST
847 … Physics Emails / Varied, AFW, NPCIP
848 … Finally Finished / 22 Apr 2010, OC, OAR, BST

950 … Are You A Twitter About Facebook / 24 May, 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
951 … Mountain Music / 24 May 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
952 … Brothers in Time / 24 May 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
953 … Ricochets Revisiting 1 / 24 May 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
954 … Ricochets Revisiting 2 / 23 July 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
955 … Butterfield Stage / 23 July 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
956 … Last Move / 23 July 2010, OC, BIO, BTR
957 … Morphing With Temperature / 7 Aug 2010, OC, BIO, BTR

Quite some time ago, and very near to where I sit right now, there was a place that still resonates in my heart. Through the lunar mists of memory I recall its name was D-Pit and for 22 years it survived as a little Bookstore and Restaurant in the village of Oakhurst on the road to Yosemite. Actually it is where Tricolors was born and Cowboy in Paris germinated. Ten years ago I closed it up to pursue the development of my game and eventually ended up in Paris. Those 22 years and the following 10 were superb. I came back to Oakhurst almost a year ago.

Music is the reason I write this – pure Mountain Music and Finally Folk. Those two monikers were the names we attached to two different iterations of music at D-Pit – the first series was in the mid to late 80’s and the second in the mid 90’s. Bill/Pete, and Trisha did much of the organization and the performers were myriad: Reno & Sheila, Fizzle, Chuck Thrapp, Tom Bopp, Alisa Fineman, Generic Bluegrass Band, D’Elle, Kim Wallach and many of Bob & Doi DeWitt’s troubadours to name a few. The great thing is that that spirit of that music now lives on at The Grind.

Every Sunday from 11:30 AM to 2:30 PM Jean Butterfield (www.jeanbutterfield.com) brings that ambiance back to our mountains at The Grind. She graces the stage – yes the Butterfield Stage – with her eclectic mix of her own songs and Kate Wolf standards. And, oh yes, she played at D-Pit lo those many years ago. Her voice has even strengthened in the interim and much of her material comes from the history of our mountains. She and her family have lived it. One of her songs in particular sticks in my mind. It is a haunting and lyrical ballad named Brothers in Time (© Jean- Butterfield Heiss, 2001). It tells a beautiful story of two tall trees – an oak and a cedar – that have stood for 400 years entwined. They have been holding hands and sharing energy nigh on to forever now.

May 12, 2010 / Mountain Music / OC pg 43, © 2010 / CIP 951, May 24, 2010 / BIO, BTR

That oak and that cedar mentioned above as the main characters in the song Brothers in Time (© Jean-Butterfield Heiss, 2001) can serve as a segue to a very different subject. Entwined for a lifetime, an eon an age – 400 years and growing. It could be individuals, or clans, or countries or continents. It could be centuries or just the 20th Century. It could be England and Malta; or Pitt and Mifsud. It could be the United Kingdom and the United States; or Europe and North America. It is living history. It is a tree – sometimes even a family tree; a growing organism.

Conventional history on the one hand; family history on the other – entwined. Separate histories entangled – linked by real events in history, both major and minor. Women’s Suffrage, and the Russian Revolution; WWI and WWII; the rise and fall of Empires and the Cold War are some of the major themes and connections. The Battle of Britain and the sinking of HMS Good Hope are examples of relatively minor linked events. Real people and real events linked only by links and time. Here we can find births and deaths on both an individual and gargantuan scale. If you are reading the one you are not reading the other, but perhaps you are connected. Certainly you are if you are a Pitt or a Mifsud, or actually any of a myriad of offshoots (Keplinger,Yarmonkin, Dallas, Bullmore, Raffalovich, Bourreau and Guggenheim to name a few). More broadly you are if you are an American, British, French, Russian or even Maltese. It will all become clearer over the years.

May 19, 2010 / Brothers in Time / OC pg 43, © 2010 / CIP 952, May 24, 2010 / BIO, BTR

January 22, 1901 – it’s not official but we’ll call it the dawn of the 20th Century. Queen Victoria is dead – the end of an era. The Victorian Era might have started 18 June 1815 when the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. It may have started even though Victoria wasn’t born till 1819, and didn’t accede to the throne till 20 June 1837. Queen Victoria: By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India. Her reign marked the zenith of the British Empire. Let’s not be picky about dates, let’s just call it an end and a beginning; a sunset and a dawn.

With the dawn of the new century Britain was in its ascendancy. 10 million square miles had been added to the British Empire between 1815 and 1914. It had started with the East India Company, progressed through Pax Britannica leading to the British Raj and direct control of India. Through the medium of the steamship, telegraph and the Royal Navy British influence and control had spread exponentially. The old saw of the sun never setting on the British Empire was true at the Dawn of the 20th Century. The universal expectation was for continuation.

Still there were little tremors to the status quo. The Second Boer War started in October of 1899. It ended in May of 1902 with a British victory and occupation of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Nothing broke but it was a foretaste. In 1903 the Women’s Social and Political Union was founded to promote women’s suffrage. Change was afoot.

May 21, 2010 / Dawn / OC pg 45, © 2010 / CIP 677, May 24, 2010 / BIO, BTR

Oh Boy, this is going to be brutal. How many trillion Facebook aficionados are there out there? I don’t think I know a soul under 40 who isn’t one. And the vast majority of those in their 40’s and 50’s manage to sign up too. Still there is a smattering of people in their 60’s, and increasing numbers in their 70’s and 80’s, who have managed to live their whole lives without it. But I am definitely on the wrong side of the masses on this one.

I don’t understand it’s almost universal popularity in the developed world. Perhaps if you are starving you have better things to do and so it is not quite as prevalent outside of North America and Europe. Fluff and me, me, me, me seem to be its main content. A superficial time waster of gargantuan proportions is perhaps a too strong opinion of mine. I must admit I was gratified and quite surprised when my daughter first put me on Facebook and a number of people wanted to be my friend. The initial pleasure was soon depleted however by the realization that there seemed to be a homogenous similarity and vacuous repetitiveness on many of the sites.

It took me years to get used to the idea of emails over snail mail and telephones. Gradually I came kicking and screaming into the latter part of the 20th century. Now it seems the 21st century requires me to go even further from real communication. Three substantive emails seem to me to have greater value than 30 or even 300 facebook or twitter encounters. I guess I should admit I have never been on twitter – the name alone says it all.

Just as Amazon essentially destroyed the independent bookstore and the internet is coming closer and closer to destroying the daily newspaper; now facebook is actually gorging on the internet. We are becoming dumber, and dumber, and dumber by design. Be careful – your freedom is almost gone. Your knowledge has disappeared behind firewalls. You will be left with nothing but twitter.

April 22, 2010 / Are You A Twitter About Facebook / OC pg 41, © 2010 / CIP 950, May 24, 2010 / BIO, BTR

Tricolors will now be trying to emphasize the ‘tri’ in our name a little more. For certain we will be continuing with the whisper of France, but now also a salute to England and a love for the United States will be a little more evident. The ‘tri’ will be a little more equal. Since it is mostly down to me now, and I am an English-American-Frenchman through and through, it seemed a little more balance would be appropriate. Besides I would like to finally use a tiny bit of what I learned way back in the sixties as a history major at SMCC and UCLA. I say a tiny bit because I have in fact forgotten most of it.

You will see this new emphasis most clearly in two new segments named The First Century and The Second Century. They will both in fact refer to the same century, but from a quite different perspective. The First Century will focus on 20th Century United States history and be told from the perspective of a native Englishman. The Second Century will deal with 20th Century British history from an American cowboy’s point of view. Both histories will have a little twist in them but we’ll just let that develop slowly over time in your mind. They will both be by me. I can do that because I hold two passports and have lived both lives. They will unfold slowly in the coming months.

April 17, 2010 / A Change in Emphasis / OC pg 37, © 2010 / CIP 674, April 22, 2010 / BIOG, BTR

During the 20th Century the views of the majority of historians, pundits and commentators on both sides of the Atlantic were extremely diverse. Predictions of who would dominate the coming decades changed almost every decade. In the Aughts or Naughts, as you prefer, the common wisdom was probably that England would continue to dominate as they had since 1815 and Waterloo. In the teens blood just flowed through the trenches and there were few predictions. Then in the Twenties sentiment swung towards the Americans as the major player in the coming decades. By the Thirties it had switched to the Germans and in the Forties there was more blood.

It is interesting to note that so far we only have one decade where the common wisdom was spot on. In the Fifties and Sixties the Soviet Union was probably the most common prediction. In the Seventies and Eighties, at least economically, it was Japan. By the Nineties it became nearly unanimous that almost all the decades in the 20th Century had in fact been American. So we end up with 2 decades where the talking heads were right. Hindsight it appears is more accurate than foresight. Herd mentality rules and commentators are mostly wrong. A person’s nationality and political persuasion more often predict their predictions than logic, or reason, or fact. I expect that includes me but that’s why I tend to deal a little more with hindsight. The glass is clearer.

April 17, 2010 / The First Century (1 – US & M) / OC pg 37, © 2010 / CIP 675, April 22, 2010 / BIOG, BTR

It’s almost a misnomer. I call it the Second Century because at the dawn of the 20th Century it was almost assumed that Britain would continue to be a dominant power, perhaps even the dominant power through the 20th Century. The 19th was Britain’s First Century – the 20th was to be its Second. As it turns out that wasn’t quite true and perhaps that can be considered a cautionary tale for the United States in the 21st Century. Basically this will just be the history of Great Britain in the last century. I use the word ‘Great’ here for the first time at least in part because I was born there and am proud of it. The point of view however will be from an American cowboy because I went there as a young boy and only viewed England from afar for the next 50 years.

British history in grand themes during the 20th Century of course resembles world history. To some extent it is world history. Women’s Suffrage, WWI, Communism, and WWII are the common themes that differ only in detail. D-Day is a world event – neither Normandy nor any nationality can claim more than a part. In the post war period however there is a gradual and more marked divergence. British history becomes just a little more parochial. Margaret Thatcher, while still a major world figure, is not a Winston Churchill. The Chunnel is closer to a bilateral than a multilateral issue. World Cups are more important from a national point of view than an international. Cultural, medical, scientific and ecological concerns come to the fore. It’s the Second Century.

April 19, 2010 / The Second Century (1 – UK & F) / OC pg 38, © 2010 / CIP 676, April 22, 2010 / BIOG, BTR

For 22 years I owned a bookstore so I might know whereof I speak. Of course that was 8 years ago and almost in another life, so perhaps I don’t. Still I want to tell you about a book I just read. The Art of Racing in the Rain is the World According to Garp, sorry Garth, Garth Stein. Having been out of the trade for lo those many years I was unfamiliar with the author. So I took my old advice to my good customers: “If you read a lot and you don’t know the author, and the book is in the Top Ten of the New York Times then it is a great book.” Works and worked like a charm. It was superb.

March 31, 2010 / I Must Be a Dog / OC pg 27, © 2010 / CIP 799, April 22, 2010 / BIOG, BTR

Having finally finished and mailed a form of the physics project that has driven me for most of the past two years there will now be a hiatus. If I live another 20 or 30 years I suppose it is conceivable I might see the beginnings of a result but realistically it is only for my grandson to know. Mostly I am just pleased that I have one more completion under my belt. Now I will maintain my interest but at a grandpa’s pace. There will only be occasional articles on Cowboy in Paris.

April 21, 2010 / Finally Finished / OC pg 41, © 2010 / CIP 848, April 22, 2010 / OAR