Stein--rue de Fleurus--is the star:  generous, bossy, with an overdose of female common sense, lording it over Hemingway and Picasso. Cameos from Matisse, Dali and Degas.   It's charming, constantly at risk of sentimentality, but never really toppling.   Behind the screen, our local movie house, tubs of popcorn, flipflops, Berkenstocks, baggy bermudas.  Every seat taken.  Twice we've shown up and been turned away.  

Up in the Sierras last weekend.  Found some kind of paw mark on our car.  Saw one bear, nose to nose, for one member of our party, who looked a little white.  He was walking down the trail looking towards the lake and people coming up the trail pointed to bruin  in the bushes five feet away.  

Last pensée for this morning:   Road-side Dog is Milosz's answer to Baudelaire's Spleen.  I've had the library copy out for two years and I haven't decided whether I need to buy it.  Neither of them, n'en déplaise à Baudelaire's laughter theory, had much of a sense of humour as I understand it.