The Dog Days of Summer...

A summer afternoon, as it should be! After a touring/tasting of the caves and wares of GH Mumm in Reims, our intrepid travelers stopped for more! What a special place, this cafe. They get what Tabletop is all about. Think Salvador Dali meets Brideshead Revisted, and you'll get a sense of what the interior is like. Yes, it was 98 degrees, and no there wasn't air conditioning, but the place was slowly filling up with locals who, for practicality's sake, needed to stop their day, and what better way than with champagne and pot of the house pate? We are back home now, and this is but a memory, though we will return- it's just too good not to!
Scouring the New York Times today, a sad story of a 19 year old young man (the Barefoot Bandit!), on the lam, who was arrested in the Bahamas caught my attention. There is a picture of him as an elementary school student, with a bright mischievous grin and a picture of his mother's property that reads "If you go past this sign you will be shot". In the article, a social worker who was assigned to the boy and his mother reported that, after his first arrest at the age of 12, he stated that "(he) wants mom to stop drinking and smoking, get a job, and have food in the house." He was known for stealing food from neighbors' freezers kept outdoors. Now, I understand that life can't always be a glass of champagne for everybody, but I sincerely believe that even the most humble of meals shared together at a table with those you love CAN start to make a difference. There is so much I can't wrap my head around in this story, but what that sign posted in the yard says is, in effect, 'NO HOSPITALITY', not even for those that LIVE there. I also understand that this family needed more than a shared meal together to help them. But it does seem to me that there is a need to ACTIVELY create times to come together and share, rather than stay separated, in our own little worlds, with our own music that only we can hear, or our own shows that we watch in our rooms, or playing our own video games alone, the same meal together.