It's been 15 years since I was a missionary in Paris. One of my favorite places to wander on a "preparation day" was the grounds of the Pompidou Center. It's a modern art museum that looks like a hamster cage with escalators in colored tubes climbing the sides of the building and overlooking a large square usually filled with musicians, performers, street hawkers, caricature artists, and the like. A few of us sang Christmas carols there once while our tone deaf companions handed out pamphlets.

Elder Mattoon and I were there on a particularly miserable day and came across a musician singing Creedence, Tracy Chapman, and The Beatles. We stayed and listened for a long time - because pagan tunes are not against the rules if you just hear them on the street. I can still hear his accent -- I wa-a-no ha-you-evah seeeeen the rain. When he moved on to Here Comes the Sun, I swear the sun broke through the clouds! (See some photos from that era, including a fire-breathing caveman who let you throw darts at his belly for 10 francs.)

Jump forward 15 years to last month. I passed through the Pompidou square trying desperately to find a grocery store that sold Chocolate Cruesli cereal. (I finally found some and bought six boxes to cram into my luggage. I have 2 1/2 left.) And there he was! Singing Tracy Chapman's Baby, Can I Hold You. His accent and guitar prowess hadn't improved a lick in 15 years, but it was still beautiful music to me.

Here he was 15 years ago -

Snake charmers perform for the tourists at Jaipur Palace in India. The guy in the middle looks like he doesn't trust the guy to his left.

On Day 2 in Oahu, we jumped over a gate with a No Trespassing sign and hiked up a little mountain in Laie (or Lā'ie if you want to get all fancy) for an excellent view. I was driving home from work today listening to this song by Patty Griffin and thought it fit pretty well with the hike and made it seem more dramatic than it was. The song is called Up to the Mountain (MLK Song) and you might recognize it from a rendition by what's-her-name in American Idol a couple of seasons ago.

On the last day of our Hawaii trip last month, the boys headed back up to the North Shore (town of Haleiwa) for a shark dive with Hawaii Shark Encounters. It was even cooler than expected. We pumped ourselves up for it by watching Discovery Channel shark attacks earlier in the week.

This spider lives on the rosebush near our front porch. Every night around 9pm, it comes out to spin a large web -- about 2-1/2 feet across -- to catch bugs attracted to our porch light. I first met it last week when I almost stuck my head through the web to make sure the front yard faucet was off (which is a nightly ritual to make sure Alexander didn't sneak out to break the water ban).

The youngest last week playing in the decomposing leaves -

The Eiffel Tower had a bit of a makeover to celebrate France's six-month presidency of the European Union (starting June 30). I tried to get some slow-shutter photos to catch all the lights, but I didn't have a tripod so there's a bit of a blur. This one is from atop the Arc de Triomphe:

And another from Trocadero with a slower shutter:

It's coolest if you imagine some street performers off to your right dancing to the Jackson Five. I'll have to post some video later.

One of the most visited pages on hillfamily.net is this fairly crummy photo from 15 years ago of Eugène Burnand's Les disciples Pierre et Jean courant au sépulcre le matin de la Résurrection (Apostles Peter and John running to the tomb the morning of the Resurrection). It comes up pretty high on a Google search and gets a lot of comments. I always felt bad that the photo was so poor, so when I was in the Orsay Museum in Paris last month I stopped by to get some better shots. Here's one (larger version here):

And here it is from further back -

It's not a very famous painting and doesn't do well with art critics, but it's one of my favorites -- you can really sense the anxiety of the moment.

Napping in New Delhi

This was on the way down from Diamond Head, an extinct volcano near Waikiki. It's not a long hike, but it's a dry hot climate, there's very little shade, there are 173 steps (it's paved all the way), and we had to get to the airport so we did a speed tour. A girl in front of us stopped her friends near these plants and said, "Hey, those are those poky things!", a statement of the obvious which for some reason struck me as pretty funny.

Anyone know what the plant is really called?