Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel

At one time on this planet, there was a golden age of glamor. Today, we have none of it left. I've been reading a lot about those days and it always amazes me how there is always a common connection somehow. Such is with another one from that great generation of glamor. Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel.

I was stunned at her humanity. A couple of sources seem to verify her generous moods. In Coco & Igor, Chris Greenhalgh  and Karen Karbo in The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman, the stories of her are amazing and yet, being human during a time of war almost cost her everything.

Igor Stravinsky, with his family, stayed with Coco. He was in the early stages of his "The Rite of 
Spring". It was Coco, who guaranteed financially the success of his production.  Later, she took care of yet another family and payed for the husband's funeral following his death. It just so happened that he was the head of the German SS which almost cost her everything. Coco, had had an earlier affair with the German.

Coco was once ask why she did not marry the Duke of Westminster. She had also had an affair with him. Her reply came, " There have been several Duchesses of Westminster. There is only one Chanel." This original account was first published in her Biography.

When she left Paris, she moved to Switzerland and remained there for years. She had designed and built her villa, La Pausa, on the French Riviera. It looks toward the Italian and French border on one side and overlooks Monaco on the other. It sits high above the village of Roquebrune. It was built in the 1930s during that golden era and of her own design.

In 1953 Coco sold her villa, La Pausa, to the Hungarian publisher and translator Emery Reves. He purchased the villa from Coco with his translations royalties of foreign languages for Winston Churchill's

Not the French Riviera but still a pretty awesome place.

books. Churchill lived there four months of each of the years 1956,1957 and 1958 while he worked on his book. After Emery's death, his wife Wendy continued to live there until her death, but in the early days after her husband's death, the Dallas Museum of Art approached Wendy about the master collection of fine art that was displayed in the house from both Coco Chanel and from the Reves. Fearing that she would sell the collection as a whole, the museum agreed to terms set down by Wendy. She wanted five (5) rooms replicated from La Pausa and to include pieces of furniture belonging to Chanel. The museum built  a 16,000 square foot addition to house Wendy's collection. Today, the Emery and Wendy Reves collection can be visited at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Chanel No. 5 has always had class. It was the woman who developed the concept as a fashion designer that lifted Chanel No. 5 to the top shelf. Coco Chanel is buried in Switzerland following her death in Paris. She had lived in Switzerland for 30 years after leaving Paris the first time.

Churchill and Napoleon: A Lesson in Two Dogs--Well,Three

The White Rock Boat House c.1934

The French and the English are connected through bloodlines that bind them  for more than two thousand years through  tribes of  Kelt's. Rome tried to conquer England in what? 46 BC by building Roman alters over the Kelt's alters. The Kelt's worshiped at those alters with little difficulty. When the Romans pulled back to Rome, the Kelt's torn down the Roman alters and continued to worship at their own alters as they had done, during and after the Roman occupation. Rome thought they had conquered the Kelt's, but what they had really done was to enforce the power of worship on the Kelt's more than ever before. Had the Kelt's been a race of people, they would have conquered the Romans in battle, spirit and mind. Riding naked on horseback with their long blond hair flowing in the wind, they had prepared for the battle by having days of drunken orgies before riding off into battle. The Druids knew how to prepare their warriors and did so regularly.

During the reign of Napoleon, the little man knew his history well. He prepared and he lead with determination. His determination. Unlike the Kelt's warriors, he dressed impressively, but his determination was none-the-less much the same and he never lost that desire to be bigger in deeds than he was in statue, though some of his statues in bronze are pretty impressive in size.

Churchill, a tenured statesman and Prime Minister, had a statesman attitude and mindset. While Churchill had some American blood, he still was that Englishman's gentleman at nature and cigar's did, indeed, make the man, but it never changed his beliefs.

Growing up, our number 3 and number 4 dogs drew their names from their personalities. Mine was a German red dachshund  named Napoleon and my brothers had a  French brown and white basset hound  named Churchill. To this day, when I see either breed, I recall easily the fun we had with those dogs in names alone. People would just walk away shaking their heads after stopping to talk and asking their names. You could see the fake smiles melt away  as they realized the dogs and the brothers were not kidding. They just didn't know how to respond to such real but shockingly unexpected answers. Their minds were not ready for what they got in honest reply. That's the way my two brothers and I are today. We laugh about it. My nephew thinks I'm hard on his dad I know, but his dad, my youngest brother, just take the banter and quips in stride as we have always done.

So, don't you see, name you dogs with a distinction in modern history A name that is or can be enshrined. I once had a friend who's dad was a big burly man with a deep voice and had that distinction of a boss-- if you know what I mean. One Christmas, she got a little white puddle puppy. When it came time to name the dog, they--the family--named it "Cheers" When asking Guido what he thought of the name---he paused and said:" The neighbors already think I'm crazy. Can't you see them when I open the door and yell out,'Cheers!' ".