“Long, long ago, when there was no czar in Russia, and scarcely an automobile or a divorced person in Mayfair, and when the throne of England was embellished not only by a beautiful queen but by several beautiful mistresses, too, and when rock gardens were still a rarity, and my mother’s greatest ambition was to […]

The wizard has been trying to teach me about writing and about photography. He says the key to both is in “what you leave out.” He says the art of careful omission awakens the imagination of both viewer and reader. In the language I added to the photo above – which I snapped, by the way – you will […]

And this is what you see from the top of the Eiffel tower. We met a lot of interesting people there.

This guy is definitely not a hobbyist but the real deal, an actual painter. Look down the street in the painting to the far end of that row of trees bordering the sidewalk in front of Notre Dame. Remember our street comedian? That’s the spot where he was working. And about 75 yards behind the […]

People leave offerings at the tomb of Jim Morrison but they leave kisses at the grave of Oscar Wilde. The wizard didn’t leave a kiss, though. He left the touch of a forefinger. I meant to ask why but I forgot.

Remember that carousel photo from last night? This is how it looks from the river.

But before we go upstairs, I thought you might like to see the kitchen at Marie Antoinette’s house. Beagles can always find the kitchen.

See those upstairs windows? We’ll look through one of those in a minute.

The private residence of Marie Antoinette is on the grounds of the Palace at Versailles, a 30-minute train ride from central Paris. It’s the most modest of all the buildings on the palace premises and it’s a very long walk – about a mile – from all the others. Very few people visit here. But […]

There was a concert inside Notre Dame. They don’t use microphones here. They use 800 year-old stone walls instead.

One of the traditions in Paris is for lovers to snap a padlock bearing their names onto the guard rail of one of the 37 bridges over the Seine and then throw the keys into the river. Consequently, the guard rails have become a solid mass of hundreds of thousands of padlocks extending from the […]

Photo by Indiana Beagle. I hopped onto the hood of a Citroen to get this angle because I wanted you to be able to see the Seine river behind Pennie and Roy instead of just the sky. One downside to being a beagle is that we aren’t very tall. There are no other downsides.

While we were waiting in line to climb to the top of Notre Dame, this fellow showed up and began to entertain us. The wizard laughed at a lot of great comedy before he finally remembered he had an iPhone. But still, it’s worth watching. Great street art deserves a reward, so I told the Wizard […]

I took the wizard and the princess on a boat ride around Isle St. Louis, our little island in the middle of the Seine. Yes, these people are dancing in the sunlight for no reason at all. Paris is like that.

Last week I showed you the view from behind the clock inside this building. This is the Musee d’Orsay, in my opinion, the finest museum in Paris. I liked it better than the Louvre. The wizard agrees. The musee is housed in the old train station that was the home of Hugo Cabret. If you […]

“Look, Michele! I think that’s Indiana Beagle on the carousel!”

This is the view from Marie’s bedroom window.

A monk on his way to work at Notre Dame dropped his MetroPass in front of Pennie. I snapped this photo as he picked it up. – Indy

French beggars have a certain amount of class, oui? I asked the wizard to drop 5 euros into the dog bowl. He obliged, of course. The dude on the right winked at me and his sister blew me a kiss. I knew they weren’t sleeping. Anyone who might try to dip into that bowl while their human is napping […]

This is the side entrance into my Paris office. I’ll show you the front later. I spent a lot of time here.

This is the table where the girl was sitting this morning. It’s obviously much later now, but you’d never know it by the clock. It’s always 6:30 at the St. Regis on the Isle St. Louis. (The French pronounce it Eel San Loo-EE.)

                      This is our hotel. The Cafe St. Regis is under the white and black awning between the two red ones across the street. Let’s walk down there, okay?

The BeagleSword was hither, thither and yon but the rabbit hole was just hither and thither. If you want to see Yon, you will need to click beyond this terminus page. But be warned: we will be wandering aimlessly. That’s how you get to Yon. If you have important things to do, you should – by […]

Found on the streets of Paris… Do I love it or hate it? I can’t decide. Email your opinion to Daniel@WizardAcademy.org and I’ll share highlights of the poll next week.

This Rembrandt is perhaps the most interesting portrait ever painted of Jesus. It’s called Pilgrims at Emmaus and it was purchased a hundred years ago by a man and his wife in Paris. Their mansion is now a museum called Musée Jacquemart-André. I took this photo with the wizard’s iPhone while he was looking at the painting. Look […]

African-American Gospel Choirs are very big in Paris right now. This poster was everywhere. We saw hundreds of them. And a French couple (Klaus and Cher) who sat next to us at dinner one night affirmed that Gospel Choirs are hot, hot, hot. Go figure.

Princess Pennie knows how much I like to run through flowers, so when we got to Luxembourg Garden she told me that she would have the wizard take my portrait with his iPhone if I would stay on the path the whole time we were there. Since the wizard is a better-than-average iPhone photo craftsman, […]

The cognoscenti know that shadows and silhouettes represent different things. A shadow represents the consequence of current actions. Silhouettes represent possible futures. And then there are portals! With one world on this side of the portal and another world on that side, a portal speaks of moving from one state of being to another state […]

From Paris, Aroo. I’ve already given you the BeagleSword. Remember, back when we were at Shakespeare and Company? That means you’re BEYOND the safe zone of the rabbit hole. Anything can happen now. We might try to sell you something or we could talk about politics or we might even talk about religion. TURN BACK NOW! […]

This bookstore on the Left Bank of the Seine has been the hangout of the literati since the time of Hemingway and James Joyce. Pennie found a newly-released graphic novel, Sculptor, by our buddy, Scott McCloud. Bought it. You should, too.

Completed by King Louis IX of France in 1248, (also known as “Saint” Louis,) the Saint-Chapelle is considered among the highest achievements of the Rayonnant period of Gothic architecture. You’ve got to climb the tallest and narrowest spiral staircase ever made of stone to get inside. No problem for a beagle, but the widebodies were […]

Gargoyles leer along the sides of Notre Dame at twilight.

The wizard took this photo of me standing in front of the clock at the top of the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. This building was once the Paris train station portrayed  in Hugo. Strangely, they don’t mention that when you come here. If I can’t find a better WiFi signal, this is going to be the shortest rabbit hole […]

Storm at the Whinestone Photographed at its secret location in the woods near Engelbrecht House. Photo by Tim Storm

Here’s a link to the fossil auction if you’re interested. And as long as we’re digging through layers of time, there’s this email from “t.” Yes, we Boomers ripped Don Mclean’s American Pie lyrics to shreds in English class in High School to grasp the deep meaning of the mystical anthem to the greatest, I mean […]

Those three guys are nameless and faceless in the second chapter of Matthew, but they are three stars of the Christmas story. So it could be said that three guys followed a star, and those three stars followed a guy, and the star that started it all has been a mystery and a debate and […]

Check out the Leonora Carrington sculpture garden in Mexico City. Wow.

The Jeff Morris Worldwide Invitational Bocce Ball Court

I like to swim with the Dancing Muses. You should join us sometime. Muses rock. We’re in the Conservatory Garden. Muses invented frolicking. Photo by Hubert J. Steed

Alice and Her Homeboys is one of the 29 statues in Central Park. Photo by By Andrés Nieto Porras from Palma de Mallorca, España.

Two bicycle mechanics were nuts enough to believe they could compete against credentialed engineers chosen by big corporations. Orville and Wilbur had neither diplomas nor money but they were our brand of crazy, yours and mine. Salute!

Do you remember about a year ago when we had a wacky writing contest that didn’t cost anything to enter but if you were one of the 18 selected winners you had to donate $500 toward building The Jeff Morris Worldwide Invitational Bocce Ball Court? Well, here’s the layout proof of the hot-cast bronze plaque that’s […]

“I’ve never had a spraytan in my life.” – Devin Wright

The sidewalk extending from the archway at the top of the photo is the entrance to Tuscan Court. It’s got a different feel than the rest of the campus. A little more elegant, perhaps, a little more formal. Or maybe that’s just my impression.

The Events Gazebo in Tuscan Court. You shoud visit it when you’re on campus at Wizard Academy.

When John Steinbeck took his dog, Charley, on a road trip to see America in 1960, he traveled in a GMC truck and camper nearly identical to this one. He called his trip “Operation Windmill” and the truck was dubbed Rocinante, the name of the horse of Don Quixote. This is Wizard Academy’s Rocinante II. […]

Two years before the outbreak of WWII, this was American culture.

“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures […]

“I was the same person that a stranger might have found worthwhile had I said I was a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, a financial reporter for The New York Times or a Pulitzer Prize nominee, all of which had been true. But I had shed status like the skin of a snake.” – Ann Crittenden, […]

    “She never missed sending me flowers on my birthday. And she was in the hospital that week. And everybody was expecting her to be released. I got up the next morning and I turned on the morning news and there it was… (hoarse) She died on my birthday…. And that afternoon, her flowers […]

“Woman’s life today is tending more and more toward the state William James describes so well in the German word, ‘Zerrissenheit: torn-to-pieces-hood.’ She cannot live perpetually in ‘Zerrissenheit.’ She will be shattered into a thousand pieces. On the contrary, she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today…. Solitude, says the […]

After a real crusher of a landing in Phoenix, the flight attendant got on the PA and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please remain in your seats until Captain Crash and the crew have brought the aircraft to a screeching halt up against the gate. And, once the tire smoke has cleared and the warning bells […]

“Freda was a dazzle, a virtual watercolor of a woman whose moods and mannerisms were as electric as her wild black hair. Her grin alone, a flash of Ipana-white teeth, head tossed back, stopped men in their tracks, delayed them in traffic, and threatened their wives so completely even the milkman was not allowed to […]

“The warrior smiles at Charlie. He’s nineteen, only five years older than she is, and has lived away from his village since he was ten. But he’s sung for enough American tourists to recognize that in her world, Charlie is a child. Thirty-five years from now, in 2008, this warrior will be caught in the tribal violence […]

“Long, long ago, when there was no czar in Russia, and scarcely an automobile or a divorced person in Mayfair, and when the throne of England was embellished not only by a beautiful queen but by several beautiful mistresses, too, and when rock gardens were still a rarity, and my mother’s greatest ambition was to […]

“I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives’ tales about how men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I have never seen this happen.” – Dorothy Parker   “Chanel No. 5” – […]

  “In my life as a writer I often remind myself – comfort myself – with what William Faulkner said about The Sound and the Fury. The whole novel, he claimed, hung on one image, the glimpse of a little girl’s muddy underpants seen from the ground as she climbed a tree. How can an […]

    “‘My time will come,’ you say to yourself, but how can you know whether or not your time has not already come and gone? Perhaps one afternoon on the veranda in Panama, with the Barbadians whetting their sickles on the hill below, the Chinese garden green, the noise of the breakers from beyond […]

TIME reporter Lily Rothman, asking the author of Twilight about her new book, The Host: “When you have a book or a movie about young people, I’m sure the question of role models comes up and I know with Twilight some of the criticism we heard was about whether Bella was a pushover or Edward […]

“I don’t always want to be the charm on someone else’s bracelet.” – Kabal, in Making It, by Helen Klein Ross

Our friend Rich Mann (above) brings these Cuban magicians to our attention. Keep in mind there are no musical instruments in this song; every sound is performed vocally. If you’re feeling twitchy and rushed, play just a little bit of it then scroll forward and play a bit more but be sure you sample through till the end. It just […]

Kit and Ace is a new luxury casual wear company owned by the wizard’s friend, JJ Wilson.  Their proprietary fabric is Technical Cashmere, a stretchy, no sag machine washable cashmere.  So Pennie ordered a shirt from KitAndAce.com Her reaction to her first Kit and Ace shirt was dramatic. She walked into the wizard’s office at home where I […]

“The mortality rate for young men in society is six times what it is for young women, from violence and from accidents, just the stupid stuff that young men do; jumping off of things they shouldn’t jump off of, lighting things on fire they shouldn’t light on fire, I mean, you know what I’m talking […]

A journal sits on the nightstand in each of the rooms in our student mansions. Sometimes our visitors write messages for you and me to read. Cathy Fleck brought this one to our attention last week. It was written by someone who stayed in her room exactly one year earlier. Cathy agreed with every word.

A mother and a daughter began their journey of life…of life together on a bench, this bench right here. They sat together, held each other, blue eyes twinkling of sadness, of happiness of hope for oh so many years.  Their hands holding one another, the same look, the same feel.  Tears have been shed, dreams […]