Readers’ wildlife photos, or “spot the osprey”

April 16, 2023 • 8:30 am

Due to my obliviousness, Sunday’s regular batch of photos from John Avise was posted yesterday. Today we have only one photo. It’s a weird one from Peter Fisher in Cumbria, and could easily have been a “spot the osprey” photo—except you can see the reveal below. Plus I enlarged the photo, and can’t make out the species, though I’m sure Peter knows what it is.

Peter’s notes (click the photo to enlarge it).

Don’t know whether you’ll be interested in this for your Reader’s Wildlife Photos. It’s not the most impressive shot of an osprey (I think you call them fishing eagles in The States) but maybe the world’s only dashcam shot of one?

JAC: The osprey, found throughout the world., is Pandion haliaetus. I quickly trawled the Internet and could NOT find any other osprey photos taken with a dashcam. Perhaps this is unique!

Sunday: Hili dialogue

April 16, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning on Sunday, April 16, 2023. I am writing this at about 1 a.m. Chicago time, but it won’t be posted until the usual time. First, a note: my hotel Internet was down all night and was just fixed—supposedly. If posts stop coming, don’t worry, I am not dead yet; it is the Internet. And since it’s Sunday, perhaps you can participate in National Eggs Benedict Day, but remember that Anthony Bourdain warned us never to odor this dish in a restaurant—or eat brunch out in general. There is a caveat given in the video below: order eggs with hollandaise sauce early in the day.

Da Nooz

I am far away from America, and so get the news only online. Here are a few items of interest.

*The NYT has a video op-ed (8 minutes) featuring a 27 year old woman who found she was eight weeks pregnant—and in Texas, that most draconian of anti-choice states. Have a look at “This is what a post-Roe abortion looks like.” She managed to get the pills by getting a doctor in another state to prescribe them, having them sent to a mailbox in a “legal” state, and then forwarded to Texas. She got them just in time, as the pills are safe up until 12 weeks of pregnancy. The regimen was not innocuous, she said, after taking the second set of pills, “medication abortion is extremely painful.”

What the woman did may well have been illegal, so she didn’t reveal what she did until today, and of course her face is blocked out and her name is not revealed.  Welcome to much of America—and, if the Supreme Court backs the Texas appellate course decision—all of America.

*I was unaware that, since yesterday, serious fighting has broken out in the beleaguered country of Sudan, where rival military factions are battling it out for control of the government:

Fighting raged across the capital of Sudan for a second day on Sunday, as months of rising tensions between factions of the armed forces suddenly spiraled into an all-out battle that threatened to scuttle the last remaining hopes of a transition to civilian rule.

By Sunday morning, it was unclear who was in control of Sudan, with both the Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group each denying that the other group had claimed control of key installations. Residents of the capital hid in their homes through a night of fighting that appeared to intensify as the sun rose on Sunday. At least 56 people were dead and almost 600 injured, mostly in Khartoum.

The chaos was an alarming turn for a nation that only four years ago was an inspiration in Africa and the Arab world. Jubilant protesters, symbolized in part by a young woman in a white robe, toppled their widely detested ruler of three decades, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, ushering in hopes for democracy and an end to the country’s grinding isolation.

The revolution faltered 18 months ago when Sudan’s two most powerful generals, who are now fighting each other, united to seize power in a coup. But pro-democracy protesters refused to back down, continuing to lose their lives in demonstrations.

*The Leaker, aka Jack Teixeira, a low-level member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was charged yesterday on only two counts, and neither of them carries whopping prison time:

Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guard member suspected of leaking a trove of classified military intelligence, was charged by the federal government Friday with retention and transmission of national defense information and willful retention of classified documents.

The two criminal charges, relayed during an appearance in federal court here Friday morning, carry a maximum of 15 years in prison. Teixeira, 21, did not enter a plea and is detained pending a hearing Wednesday. The government is seeking continued detention.

Teixeira was arrested Thursday afternoon at a family residence in Dighton, Mass., after a fast-moving investigation related to leaks of military intelligence that started with a small online group and eventually led to hundreds of government secrets spilling out to the wider world.

As a result, dozens of highly classified documents have been leaked, revealing sensitive information intended for senior military and intelligence leaders on subjects including U.S. spying on allies and exposing the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia.

*The grim prospects for the war? The link above notes documents suggesting that the war will grind on into next year with neither Russia nor Ukraine making significant advances—and no peace talks. (Peace talks can only mean that Russia gets to keep part of Ukraine.)

That conclusion comes from one of the documents leaked by Teixeira, although these documents have not been verified by the U.S. government as authentic. But it’s likely they are, and thus this is depressing:

The analysis concludes that, even if Ukraine recaptures “significant” amounts of territory and inflicts “unsustainable losses on Russian forces,” an outcome U.S. intelligence finds unlikely, the nation’s gains would not lead to peace talks.

“Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023 in all considered scenarios,” says the document, which has not been disclosed previously.

The assessment, based on close U.S. scrutiny of each side’s troop counts, weaponry and equipment, could galvanize the war’s critics who have called on major powers such as the United States and China to push for Kyiv and Moscow to reach a settlement and end a conflict that has displaced millions and left hundreds of thousands dead or wounded.

Asked about the DIA’s assessment, a U.S. official said the decision on when to negotiate is up to President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people, underscoring what has been a hands-off approach to mediation espoused by the administration since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The United States will continue to stand with Kyiv and provide it with the equipment and weapons that will bolster its position at the negotiating table, whenever that day comes, the official said.

But “bolstering its position at the negotiating table” is a long way from Ukrainian victory. Zelensky wants unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine (he probably wants Crimea back, too), and Putin will never put up with this. I would not be surprised if the U.S. is already leaning on Zelensky to give up part of eastern Ukraine to end this conflict, while officially saying that we’re applying no pressure.

*Finally, the viral Elon Musk is about to launch his gigantic Starship, designed to carry people to both the Moon and Mars. Its first launch, a test flight that may take place this week, will be unmanned. Liftoff will be from Texas:

It’s the biggest and mightiest rocket ever built, with the lofty goals of ferrying people to the moon and Mars.

Jutting almost 400 feet (120 meters) into the South Texas sky, Starship could blast off as early as Monday, with no one aboard. Musk’s company got the OK from the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday.

It will be the first launch with Starship’s two sections together. Early versions of the sci-fi-looking upper stage rocketed several miles into the stratosphere a few years back, crashing four times before finally landing upright in 2021. The towering first-stage rocket booster, dubbed Super Heavy, will soar for the first time.

For this demo, SpaceX won’t attempt any landings of the rocket or the spacecraft. Everything will fall into the sea.

“I’m not saying it will get to orbit, but I am guaranteeing excitement. It won’t be boring,” Musk promised at a Morgan Stanley conference last month. “I think it’s got, I don’t know, hopefully about a 50% chance of reaching orbit.”

The damn thing has THIRTY THREE MAIN ENGINES and can carry up to 100 people all the way to Mars. Its first flight will last 90 minutes, and the rocket will be re-usable  Here’s a photo (and caption) from the AP:

This undated photo provided by SpaceX shows the company’s Starship rocket at the launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. (SpaceX via AP)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili shows that she is a (secular) Jewish cat:

Hili: I suspect that nothing is OK.
A: I suspect that you exaggerate.
In Polish:
Hili: Podejrzewam, że nic nie jest dobrze.Ja: Podejrzewam, że możesz przesadzać

***************

From reader Thomas:

From Anna:

From Jesus of the Day:

Two tweets from Masih: More brave Iranian women. Would you remove your hijab knowing that you might be arrested by the dreaded morality police and jailed? Or worse?

From Simon, another academic meme from Oded Rehavi. No gratitude!

From Pyers. How could this have happened?

From Barry. I too was much relieved after reading this explanation from Marjorie Taylor Greene:

From the Auschwitz Memorial:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. Sound up on the first one!

Trombidium is a genus of mite:

Sound up to hear the purr. A cat is a cat:

Caturday felid trifecta: Three videos with Messi the cougar

April 15, 2023 • 1:00 pm

I almost forgot Caturday! Today I will cobble one together featuring the planet’s most famous cougar (Puma concolor), Messi. He’s a rescue cougar, and his staff has made many videos about him. I’ll show three, and will I’ll let Wikipedia explain Messi’s situation:

Messi (Russian: Месси; born 30 October 2015) is a pet cougar, model and Internet celebrity, owned by Russian couple Alexandr and Mariya Dmitriev. The Dmitrievs live with Messi in a two-storey house on a large plot of land in Penza, Russia. Messi was adopted in 2016 from a local petting zoo. In 2017, the Dmitrievs started an Instagram account and a YouTube channel for Messi, which became very popular by 2018 and continues to grow in subscribers.

Here’s Messi cuddling up to his staff in bed, just like a housecat.

Messi was born in a zoo at Saransk, Russia. He was one of three newborn cougars at the zoo to be named after professional football players for current Paris Saint-Germain and former FC Barcelona; Messi was named after Lionel Messi, and the other two were named Suarez and Neymar. The cubs were given these names because Saransk was one of several cities proposed to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. Messi was later sold to a petting zoo in Penza when he was three months old.

Messi was significantly smaller than other typical male cougars, and as the species is not native to Russia, he could not be released into the wild. He had numerous other health problems as well, which rendered him unable to live in a zoo or wildlife sanctuary either. Furthermore, workers at the petting zoo originally planned to euthanize him.

In 2016, Alexandr and Mariya Dmitriev visited the Penza zoo and met Messi for the first time. The couple experienced “love at first sight,” and noticed Messi’s exceptionally gentle personality. The Dmitrievs already had a sphynx cat named Kira but Aleksandr always wanted a big cat and so they considered bringıng Messi home and offered a high price to the zoo authorities. “So we went to the zoo and started negotiations to buy Messi. We were surprised ourselves when they agreed”, Mariya Dmitriev recalled in an interview with Caters News.

Here’s Messi getting a bit of omelet for a treat:

When they first purchased Messi, Alexandr and Mariya Dmitriev lived in a small studio apartment in Penza. The hallway of the apartment was modified and was designated as Messi’s play area  Messi uses toys such as empty bottles and balls. Messi has a gentle and calm personality, and has never attacked a person or another animal. The Dmitrievs sometimes refer to him as “kitten.”

Messi is regarded by his owners as similar to a domestic dog. He has been trained at a local dog training facility and has learned around ten formal commands. The Dmitrievs walk Messi regularly using a leash, coat, and harness through various environments.

Messi is fed twice a day, and his diet mostly consists of raw turkey, beef, and chicken.  It costs the Dmitrievs about 630 rubles per day to feed him. The couple regularly bathes Messi in a bathtub and sometimes trim his claws.

Messi is house-broken (trained) and prefers to stay inside when there is snow outside.

Here Messi is howling for Alexandr; I guess he’s highly bonded with him:

Paris: Day 5, meal 5; plus sightseeing

April 15, 2023 • 11:30 am

As I said, I didn’t sleep a wink last night, and though I was a total wreck in the morning, some Parisian air, a Métro ride, and a hefty lunch bucked me up.  So much so, in fact, that we did some sightseeing afterwards.

First, my favorite sign on the Métro, and I am going to use my own translation, which is mine, and one I like:

ATTENTION!  Do not put your hands in the doors, by doing so you risk getting them pinched VERY HARD.

Silly rabbit. . .

On to the restaurant; Winnie knew I liked duck and had searched out a duck restaurant, La Grange Aux Canards, which turned out to be near my old stomping grounds in the Sixth. It was in fact a Southwestern French restaurant, but every item save one on the main menu and few entées, cheeses, and desserts, was made with duck (there was one steak; see below). The menu is here.

I had stopped eating duck because I love them and take care of the mallards of Botany Pond (don’t mention my hypocrisy; I already know it), but I slipped up this one time because French duck breast, cooked rare, is to die for. I will go to hell, I know.

Of course the restaurant was full of duck-related items. This was under the main counter:

And three ducks on the wall. Winnie’s translation:

We, the southwest of France…
…if we can…
…we avoid it!

Clearly you don’t want to be a duck in southwest France! I’m not sure who the artist was.

Winnie had 12 ESCARGOTS, Beurre d’échalote au vin blanc, persillade et Bayonne. (Caps are from the manu.) That is snails with all the trimmings.

I had the COU DE CANARD FARCI AU PORC ET CANARD (duck neck stuffed with pork and duck, served with small potatoes and dressed lettuce. It was a very good starter:

For mains, Winnie had LES AIGUILLETTES DE CANARD, Sauce au miel et sésame torréfié, Poêlée de légumes ou pommes gersoises. That is, thick filets of duck with all the trimmings:

My dish, a French classic whose consumption will damn me: LE MAGRET DE CANARD ENTIER DU SUD-OUEST, Sauce au miel et sésame torréfié, pommes gersoises. It was superb, cooked pretty rare, which is the right way to do it. Duck cooked this way takes on a somewhat beefy flavor. Besides honey, the sauce had a bit of orange in it, but didn’t overwhelm the heavenly flavor of the magret:

See how rare it is?

On the menu: they won’t serve you their one beef dish unless it’s cooked either “bleu” or “saignant” (both are “vary rare”). The French know how to cook and eat beef, and they won’t let tourists get away with “medium rare” or even worse degrees of cooking. There’s an English translation:

After dinner they gave us complementary shots of Armagnac with a booze-steeped prune. It was excellent: just the right finish:

The restaurant’s card:

Today was market day across the street at the Maubert-Mutualité Metró station.  We both love markets and I took photos while Winnie bought more food for her later dinner (as I said, she can eat!), including fresh shrimp, strawberries, and a roasted guinea fowl.

Here’s a “typical” Frenchman, toting an accordion on his back. I saw two of these guys within an hour. But where were the mimes? Send in the mimes!

Stuff on sale at the market. First a nearby bakery sells the croissants that won the “best butter croissant in Paris” prize a few years ago. The line is out the door and they’re only a bit more than one Euro. I had one the last time I was here; they’re served warm from the oven and oozing with butter.

Some green stuff (cabbage?):

Some more green stuff (fennel?)

A stall that sold many kinds of honey. Even the very dark stuff is honey:

These tiny melons (from Morocco, not France), not much bigger than a softball, are fantastic when ripe, and have an indescribable perfume.  They were 35 or 45 euros each, though!

Tiny squid:

A flounder. Note how the eye, which used to be on the other side when the fish was young, has migrated over the top the head so it can lie flat on the seabed and still see. This is one of the great feats of developmental evolution. Baby flouders start off swimming upright and look like normal fish, but then, when they start resting on the bottom, the whole morphology changes and the eye migrates to the “up” side of the body.

Beautiful oysters:

And scallops:

Veins of mold in a Roquefort cheese:

I skipped dessert at the duck place because Winnie reminded me that just a block away was the fancy pastry shop Aux Merveilleux de Fred, and last time I was here I was blown away by their individual chocolate merveilleux. So I got one, a fistful of napkins (it’s messy eating it on the street), and scarfed it while walking.  In the store:

Display and consumption (photos by Winnie):

The guts: chocolate, real cream filling, meringue, and cake at the bottom:

Two views of the church Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, finished in 1626. Inside rest the remains of Blaise Pascal and Jean Racine. The remains of the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, murdered in his bath, are in the church cemetery.

The famous Panthéon is right nearby. It was designed to be a.church, but when it was finished in 1790 they decided to make it into a memorial for famous Frenchmen (and now some French women). This page tells you who’s in there; they include Louie Braille, Pierre and Marie Curie, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, and Voltaire.

The library of the Sorbonne, right next to the Panthéon; only students and professors are allowed in. Since it’s so lovely and cozy inside, there’s always a line awaiting entry:

A panorama of the historic and scenic area:

Close by was our goal, the Musée Curie, the place where Marie Curie and her husband Pierre (formally, Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie) discovered radium and polonium, for which they won the Nobel Prize. Marie won it another time, too, and so did her daughter and son-in-law Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie. That makes five Nobels in two generations of one family: a record!

The museum is open Wednesday through Saturday afternoons, is free, and is well worth seeing. It was renovated in 2012 by Marie’s and Pierre’s youngest daughter Ève.and has a lot of the original material used by the Curies and a great display of the early days of radioactivity studies.

A photo of Marie, working in her lab, on the outside gate:

The entrance to the building. This is where the Atomic Age really began:

And a commemorative plaque. I’m sure you can puzzle out the French:

Marie’s office, with many original furnishings. The door to the left leads to her chemistry lab where radium was isolated.

The lab, with much of the apparatus apparently original:

Some of the instruments constructed to isolate and test radioactive material. A lot of the apparatus was specially designed by the Curies and made by master craftsmen. Don’t ask me what these things are.

For a while radium was a fad, considered good to drink and good for cosmetics. Only tiny amounts were used in these products, though, so nobody was hurt. It was a different story, however, with the American women—the “Radium Girls”—who had to paint glow-in-the-dark watch hands with radioactive paint, licking the brushes between applications. You can imagine the results. I recommend the fascinating but disturbing account of this: The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women.

Marie Curie’s calling card:

Despite my lack of sleep, it was another great day in Paris: food, science, and history. You can’t beat that with a stick!

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 15, 2023 • 9:00 am

John Avise sent me the customary Sunday batch of themed bird photos while I was here, but I can put up one set of wildlife pics today: Saturday.. (Actually, I thought it was Sunday. . . ) The intro and IDs are John’s, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Dendrology Birds

Dendrology is the scientific study of woody plants (i.e., trees).  Although most birds perch in trees at least occasionally, several bird species actually get their Common Names from the trees or tree products (wood) that they favor.  Several such avian taxa are the subject of this Sunday’s post.  The state where each photograph was taken is indicated in parentheses.

American Tree Sparrow, Spizelloides arborea (Ohio):

Tree Swallow, Tachycineta bicolor (California):

Wood Duck, Aix sponsa (California):

Wood Stork, Mycteria americana (Florida):

Pine Siskin, Spinus pinus (California):

Pine Warbler, Setophaga pinus (Florida):

Pine Grosbeak male, Pinicola enucleator (Colorado):

Pine Grosbeak female (Colorado):

Palm Warbler, Setophaga palmarum (Florida):

Oak Titmouse, Baeolophus inornatus (California):

Willow Flycatcher, Empidonax trailii (California):

Magnolia Warbler, Setophaga magnolia (Michigan):

Spruce Grouse, Canachites canadensis (Alaska):

Saturday: Hili dialogue

April 15, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning on Saturday, April 15, 2023, traditionally the day that your income taxes are due; but since it’s the weekend, Tax Day is April 18. It’s also National Glazed Spiral Ham Day. Sadly, I didn’t sleep a wink last night.

To see what notable events happened on this day, or which famous people were born or died, go to the April 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Nellie Bowles gives her weekly news summary at The Free Press, “TGIF: they can’t handle the truth.” Here are three items:

→ A family murdered in Israel: Last Friday, a Palestinian terrorist gunned down an Israeli family headed out for a family holiday. Sisters Rina (15 years old) and Maia (20 years old) were murdered. Their mother, Lucy, died from her injuries a few days later. I have nothing clever to say here, only sadness and awe at the way Rabbi Leo Dee and his three surviving children have handled this unspeakable tragedy. Lucy’s heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys were transplanted to five people.

If you haven’t watched the footage of his eulogies, I really recommend taking a moment to do so.

→ Professor cooked his data to make it seem like America is more racist than it is: A prominent professor has lost his job after apparently faking the results in at least six studies about race in America. A fellow of the American Society of Criminology, Eric Stewart made a name for himself with research showing just how racist Americans are. One study “showed” that as black and Hispanic communities grew, the white people around them wanted more discriminatory sentencing. But it turns out his data was all fake. And then everyone around Stewart worked to hide that fact.

The revelation came from one of his own coauthors, Professor Justin Pickett, who published a deep-dive skeptical review of Stewart’s work in 2020, writing: “The findings suggest that the five articles were likely fraudulent” and “several coauthors acted with negligence bordering on complicity after learning about the data irregularities.”

Why? America loves a good tale of racism. If your data doesn’t conform to the narrative, fake it.

And speaking of the Young Turks:

→ Welcome to the radical middle, Ana Kasparian: Prominent leftist media personality and cohost of The Young Turks Ana Kasparian recently made enemies within her tribe by saying it was kind of annoying to be called a birthing person and that she’d like to be called a woman. The fallout continued this week as her request is literal violence and means. . . Ana Goes to Gulag! Ana Goes to Gulag!

Cenk Uygur, the creator of The Young Turks, is also drinking the Heterodox Kool-Aid (coming to shelves near you), writing this week about how “abolishing prisons” isn’t a popular idea (I promise, that’s a controversial statement among his crowd). This same leftist network previously brought us both Dave Rubin (now, of course, a conservative) and Hasan Piker (still a socialist, but mostly just rich and shirtless). So really, Ana and Cenk are exactly on schedule.

*Legal Nooz from reader Ken:

Justice Alito, sitting as the circuit justice for the Fifth Circuit, has issued a complete temporary stay the Court of Appeals’ order in the mifepristone case, until midnight next Wednesday, April 19th, pending consideration of the issue by the full court.

This ensures that the pill will remain available until the court rules as a whole.

*According to Al Jazeera, the Hinducentric government of Prime Minister Modi of India has slowly been removing mention of evolution from school curricula; now it’s available only in classes 11 or 12, when students are 16-18 years old (many have left school by then):

By the 2021-2022 academic year, Darwin’s theory was quietly removed from the examination syllabus for the students of Class 9 and Class 10. By 2022-2023, the topic of evolution was completely purged from school textbooks, teachers and education experts told Al Jazeera.

Now, millions of school students will not know who Darwin was or what his theory says – unless they opt for biology in Class 11 and Class 12.

The changes to textbooks were prescribed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), a state-run body under the federal education ministry.

. . .Evolution is not the only glaring omission in the textbooks, introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government that has ruled India since 2014.

Modi’s BJP and its ideological mentor, the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), have long campaigned for a revision of India’s textbooks that aligns with their political objective of replacing a constitutionally secular India with an ethnic Hindu state.

In pursuit of that goal, the BJP and other RSS-affiliated Hindu groups are running a campaign to marginalise India’s 200 million Muslims, who constitute 14 percent of its population. Denying the historical fact that Muslims ruled over the Indian subcontinent for centuries – and demonising those rulers by creating an alternate history of alleged Hindu persecution – are major elements of that campaign.

*Smithsonian reports the oldest known specimen of a bat, whose early fossils are very scarce because they’re quite fragile.  It’s 52 million years old and came in a collection from Wyoming.  Behold a fossil of Icaronycteris gunnelli (h/t Matthew):

Photo from PLoS ONE

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili had a Senior Cat Moment:

Hili: I’m returning to where I came from.
A: Why?
Hili: Because I forgot what I came here for.
In Polish:
Hili: Wracam tam, gdzie byłam.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Bo zapomniałam po co tu przyszłam.
***************

From Jesus of the Day:

A bufflehead duck with its crest reflected in the rising sun, photo by reader Colin Franks found on Facebook (Colin’s photography site is here, his Facebook site is here and his Instagram site is here.)

From Anna Krylov, a lizcat cartoon:

A retweet from Masih:

From Simon. Apparently Ron De Santis ate pudding with his fingers. Grist for the political mill:

More on PuddingGate from George Conway (via Simon):

A lovely ancient dark carving sent by gravelinspector:

From Luana: read the apparently true story at the NY Post link:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a man gassed upon arrival:

Matthew’s staying away from Twitter to write his Crick book, but he couldn’t resist a peek:

 

Paris: Day 4, meal 4

April 14, 2023 • 11:45 am

I don’t know what the magic ingredient is in Paris that’s making me sleep more: distance from Chicago, lack of responsibilities, large quantities of good food, or all of the above. But for some reason my insomnia has largely disappeared: I slept over 10 hours last night. Perhaps I should move here!

Getting up late means a lack of morning activities, so I have nothing cultural or touristic to report today: only food. There is, however, an exhibition of felines at the Natural History Museum and, as a reader mentioned, an exhibition of prehistoric art at the Musée de l’Home (“the Museum of Man”, a name that would already have been changed in America).

Today, after sleeping late, doing my morning ablutions, and writing a Hili post, it was already time for lunch. Today we went back to an old favorite that I first discovered when I did my sabbatical here in 1989, and it’s been consistently very good: L’Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes It’s very close to Republique and also to Cartet. But it’s not well known to tourists, and we saw none today. I’m surprised at this. given the restaurant’s quality, but it is a bit out of the way and hard to spot. As you see below, only the tiny sign tells you where it sits on a deserted back street.

Here’s the restaurant with Winnie for scale (she’s about 5′ 5″).

Interior. Not my photo, but one from from The Fork.

We dined with two of Winnie’s local friends: Irina and Konstantin (originally from Russia, but are gravitating here (they bought a flat) after they retired from jobs in the Bay Area of California). It was a delightful lunch with good food, good company, and good ambience.

I have never had a meal here that was less than very good, and the price is right (39 Euros for a big three-course lunch, without wine). They’re famous for their cassoulet, which is both delicious and comes in HUGE portions that no single person (save “The Whale” in the movie I saw on the flight over) could finish. See below for other dishes (the menu is here).

Everything here is from a meal for four.

First, the SALADE FRISÉE AUX LARDONS, CROÛTONS À L’AIL CONFIT, OEUF BIO POCHÉ (description in caps taken from the menu). This is the best salade frisée I’ve ever have, with delicious fresh greens, a hot poached egg on top, and, best of all, plenty of thick-cut bacon along with the croutons. As you see, there are more lardons than croutons. For many people this salad would be a meal. Winnie and I each had one:

Irina and Konstantin, being Russian and hence brought up on herring, ordered it as an entrée: RAMEQUIN DE HARENGS POMMES À L’HUILE:

Wines are served in 50 cl. “pots”.  We had one of Brouilly and one of Pouilly-Fuissé:

I decided to skip the cassoulet (for the first time) and try a steak: the ENTRECÔTE (400 GR ENV) DE BOEUF FRANÇAIS, CRÈME AU POIVRE DE MADAGASCAR, GRATIN DAUPHINOIS.  I slathered the sucker with pepper sauce and dug in (it was cooked “saignant” or “bloody”). The steak was good (not as good as the onglet at Chez Denise), and the potatoes were spectacular:

Irina and Winnia had a risotto for the plat: RISOTTO “CARNAROLI” AUX ASPERGES VERTES DE PROVENCE DU DOMAINE SAINT-VINCENT. It’s asparagus season here, and it’s on many menus.

The house speciality: CASSOULET DE L’AUBERGE. This is about half of what was in the copper pot (see below) but most of the meat. Nobody ever finishes a single portion. Konstantin pronounced it excellent. It is!

And the Remains of the Dish, which Konstantin didn’t finish:

Desserts: Winnie’s MILLE FEUILLE À LA VANILLE DE MADAGASCAR ET CARAMEL AU BEURRE SALÉ (a bit out of focus; I used ambient light in all photos):

Irina’s BABA AU RHUM, ANANAS INFUSÉ À LA VANILLE DE MADAGASCAR:

And my TARTE TATIN, CRÈME FRAÎCHE D’ISIGNY, before and after application of the crème fraîche. There are few finer French desserts than a tarte Tatin (an apple tart) served warm with crème fraîche. Ice cream would be too much, and whipped cream too light and sweet. The tart and heavy crème is just what it needs.

And now I am full once more, and hoping to sleep well again tonight.