The Mighty Loing

I've been working like mad in the evenings after the kids have "fais dodo" to rebuild my iPhoto library. One not-too-smooth drag and drop months ago sent the entire photo library into a tail spin. It's tedious work and all the while I'm thinking how precarious the record of our memories is - they seem just a hard-drive crash away (one of the reasons I remain a fan of Polaroid instant film).

Yet this exercise has given me a chance to revisit many fond memories, and as it happens, especially of my early days in France when I was still reeling from the culture shock of living in a new country and being a new mother. I knew when I took this photo of the town where we first lived - the town where my daughter spent her first 5 months- that I'd look back in disbelief that I lived in such a beautiful place. The town is called Moret-sur-Loing, and is about an hour train ride outside Paris. It's has fewer then 5,000 people and sits on the "mighty Loing" as I called it, a river that feels little more than a creek. Still, it was buh-yooo-tiful, and I spent many happy days pushing my baby girl around its cobblestone streets while conjugating verbs in my head.

Impressionist and Englishman Alfred Sisley lived and worked in Moret and documented the town and its surroundings well. His home was just down the hill from our place. See Franck below searching for a bit of inspiration while standing in front of Sisley's studio.

Moret-sur-Loing, Alfred Sisley, 1888

"If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank" (Woody Allen)

LVM (le vieux moulin, no relation to LVMH): The Old Mill (INSEAD students lived there and held a weekly party on Thursdays)