you hold my...

Happy Birthday Ade!

Happy Birthday Pío

Happy Independence Day

This is my song, oh God of all the nations,

a song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

but other hearts in other lands are beating

with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,

and sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too and clover,

and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

This is my song, thou God of all the nations;

a song of peace for their land and for mine.

This is my prayer, O Lord of all earth's kingdoms:

Thy kingdom come on earth thy will be done.

Let Christ be lifted up till all shall serve him,

And hearts united learn to live as one.

Oh hear my prayer, thou God of all the nations;

Myself I give thee; let thy will be done.

--From the United Methodists (Stanzas 1 & 2 by Lloyd Stone, Stanza 3 by Georgia Harkness):

Goodbye Ti Couz

So my nephew wanted to eat French food on his last night in San Francisco and I thought I would take him to what was one of my favorite restaurants in the City. But when I drove by I noticed it was closed. Apparently it was closed at the end of May.  How sad.

It opened around the same time I arrived in San Francisco in the early 1990s, when Valencia Street was a grittier. I remember my first meal there was divine. I came to it again and again because no matter what you ordered, it was delicious, you could not go wrong. The food was the spiritual solace of Brittany. My favorites were the French onion soup or the salad de mer. The buckwheat crepes were unique and savory, not like the crepes you find in other eateries. My favorite combination was sausage, mushroom and cheese or onions. They had a slight fermented pear cider to accompany the meal. And for dessert there were any number of combinations: bananas & nutella, apple compote with berry syrup. In recent years, I thought the quality had gone down; there were no longer the long lines listed on the white boards. Still I will miss this place. It was like an old friend. Good bye Sylvie. Goodbye Ti Couz.