PAUL CHRISTENSEN

We've just passed through August 15, one of the summer's biggest festival days, the Assumption of Mary, the day in which Mary ascends into heaven escorted by a troop of jubilant angels. The Renaissance couldn't get enough of the image of a woman rising out of the mundane world into a blindingly bright, cloud-adorned sky, with trumpets blasting and angels radiant with joy. It is a remarkable image, powerful, sublime, the idea that a mortal now turned sacred mother could rise o

Here's what you give up in a heat wave here in southern France. You don't leave the house much, since the paved streets can reach well above one hundred degrees and melt your shoe lasts. You don't linger in the full sun very long; you keep an eye out for shade, and when you find it, you sit down on a bench and pretend to be hypnotized by the skill of old men playing boules in a dusty pitch. Boules games are boring for the most part, so to keep your seat and keep away poachers