My friend Jim McNalis writes that the news from people inside Burma confirms what we've been hearing on the outside: that the military government is aggravating the suffering caused by the cyclone.

They have sealed off the disaster area and outlawed massive relief efforts. There are reports that when the military finds supplies that have gotten through, they confiscate them. And that when they see people with cameras, they arrest them.

George Orwell, author of Burmese Days as well as 1984, should be around to describe a world in which humanitarian aid is seen as subversive.

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Charles Bricker, our NFL and tennis writer, is enjoying his time in France before the French Open. This is the second in what I hope will be a running correspondence:

The France Pass, allowing three rail trips within a one-month window, was a bit over $300, or approximately what it costs to fill up a gas tank on a French rental car.

Yes, yes. A bit of an exaggeration, but the point is well taken. At the equivalent of $8 a gallon, cars are not such a great bargain anywhere in Europe, and, though I intend to hire a car in Toulouse next week to drive to the Pyrenees, I'm perfectly happy riding the bus and getting around on foot here in Antibes.

Took the 200 mph TGV down from Paris on Saturday, a smooth five-hour ride with stops in Aix and Cannes before alighting in Antibes. The France Pass at 300-and-something dollars is for first-class travel and there was more than enough room to stretch out on the ride down. Don't scrimp on the France Pass. There probably is no better time to be on the Mediterranean than early to mid-May, just before the serious tourist season begins.

Prices are still down and the town is still very largely locals. I'm staying in a modern apartment, which I'm renting from an English couple for about $100 a day. It's on the cape, about a half-mile from the Eden Roc Hotel, which of course was "Gausse's Hotel" in Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night.

This is a peninsula and if you go around the Eden Roc side you wind up in Juan Les Pins, which eventually runs back into Antibes. The walks here are fantastic, whether you're moving up and down the sharply inclined roads on the cape or down below in the town, where the three-block open-air market is open daily and the boats are lined up along their slips near Old Town.

There are exquisite day trips from here. You can be in Monte Carlo in a half-hour by train, though I prefer the slightly shorter ride to Beaulieu-sur-Mer, where you can spend hours in the gardens at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild.

It's also not that far north to St. Paul de Vence or the gorges de Loup, if you care for waterfalls and hikes.

It's Monday, yet another holiday in France, which means only a few stores will be open. No country has more national holidays, which goes quite well with a 35-hour week. May 1 was Ascension Day. Last Thursday was Victory Europe day, yet another day off. And, because it was on Thursday, the government always includes a Friday to make the holiday longer.

Today is. . .let me look this up. . .ah, yes, Whit Monday, another holiday. What is Whit Monday? As far as I can make out, it's "the second Monday after Ascension." Why is this a day off? Who knows. I'm not sure even American Catholics have ever heard of Whit Monday.

Anyway, it's 8:45 a.m. The swallows are diving outside the window of my second-floor apartment, doves are cooing off in the distance and the Navette should be arriving at the bus stop, just a few steps outside the door, on its route from Eden Roc back into town. I'm going to catch it, buy a baguette at the boulangerie in the old town and tour the Napoleon Museum. Antibes, as any Frenchman could tell you, is where The Little Guy reappeared on the mainland after his exile to Elba and where he began his march back to Paris.

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My mom and I arrived a little before noon, driving past Moravian College, the 6th oldest in the United States (founded in 1742). There was an art fair on Main Street, so we browsed the booths set up in front of handsome brick buildings, the familiar red facades of Pennsylvania.

The Moravian Book Shop took up several storefronts and included a gift shop and cafe, where we had lunch - quiche and salad followed by delicious rice pudding. A man was happily giving away samples of chocolates at one table while a woman - Ukrainian on one side of her family, American Indian and Pennsylvania Dutch on the other - painted intricate designs on eggs. Easter eggs in the Christmas City.

A little before two we headed south across the Lehigh River, empty steel mills rusting on our left. Mom said that there were plans to build a casino on the site. Gambling in the Christmas City.

Well-dressed people walked the sloping paths of Lehigh University - blue blazers and grey slacks were in abundance, and bow ties occasionally appeared under heads that looked professorial. Trees wore fresh green leaves and the dogwoods blazed.

Packer Memorial Church was packed. Our seats were in the north transept, close to the orchestra and 70-plus choir, and with an unobstructed view of the gorgeous stained glass windows.

The conductor appeared, and the music began: J.S. Bach's Mass in B Minor. The church filled with an exquisite, moving, ageless music. H.L. Mencken used to come up from Baltimore for this festival - this was the 101st - and in one of his articles about it he surmised that even if no one came to hear them, the Bach choir of Bethlehem would still sing, with the same passion and conviction, the music of the great German composer.

It is probably true, but it was not a thought that occurred to me on Saturday. Because the audience was large, and wrapt, and rose in enthusiastic applause after the appropriate period of silence that followed the last note. When the conductor Greg Funfgeld spoke at the end, he thanked the audience for its support during his 25 years at the helm. To which a man in the pew across the aisle from us shouted, "Thank YOU!"

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Born on this day in 1895 in Red Bank, NJ.

There was a time when travel books were so respectable even our greatest literary critic wrote them.

Wilson was interested in virtually everything (except, strangely, the Spanish-speaking world), so it was only natural that he wrote travel books. His most famous, Europe Without Baedeker (Baedeker being the Frommer of its day), is a characteristically detailed description of the post-war cultural and political landscape of England, Italy and Greece.

In Red, Black, Blond and Olive he visits New Mexico (focusing on the Zuni), Haiti, Soviet Russia and Israel. (What did I say about wide-ranging?). On his way to Haiti he stops in Miami:

"I have never been here before and am astounded and appalled by this place. ... Miami Beach goes on for miles, with its monotonous lines of palms, its thousands of hotels and houses which seem to have imposed on them ... a blanched and insipid uniformity. ...What draws people to this vacuum?"

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I won't be here tomorrow as I'm flying to New Jersey to see my mom and attend the 101st Bach Festival in nearby Bethlehem, PA. Look for a full report - kidney stone be damned - on Monday.

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I've always loved our sports department, but especially now, as in my hour of need tennis writer Charles Bricker, in Paris early for the French Open, has sent his impressions on being back in the City of Light for the first time in a year:

"It was the sign I thought I'd never see in Paris.

Of course I knew before I arrived here Sunday afternoon that smoking was no longer permitted inside French restaurants, but it was still a bit startling to glance to my right and see the distinctive and universally understandable sign on a pillar.

Defense de Fumer! And there was a lit cigaret with a red line through it, connecting to points of a red circle. What was even better was my waiter, who a few seconds later leaned over the table next to mine and told a young American teenager, "No cellphones, please."

I don't want to hear anything more about the lack of civility in Paris. It's a sham, the big lie that has been too long perpetuated. It's very simple. Act like a boor in someone else's country, get treated like a boor.

This is my 14th trip to Paris, almost all of them combined with a work assignment to cover the French Open, which begins the final Sunday in May. But I always come early to spend time in France and decided this year to take a week in Paris before training to Antibes for a week and then taking a few days to hike in the Pyrenees before reporting to work. My philosophy? Damn the exchange rate. Repeat the good stuff and add something new every year, and I expect the Pyrenees to be a fine new experience.

I'm using a book called Paris Walks this week, which is written by a travel writer for the London Telegraph and, while it could use some refining, I'm seeing things I've never seen before. Spent Monday doing "Secret Gardens and Great Mansions," kicking off from the intersections of rue de Sevres and rue de Babylone, which is where you'll find Au Bon Marche', which easily outscores Harrad's food section for quality. The walk took five hours and a couple of foot massages, but there was the wonderful hour spent sunning, munching and reading in the little known Jardin de Catherine Laboure.

Tuesday it was up to Montmartre, but this time rather than just roaming, using the book. Began at Abbesses, took the funicular up to the Sacre Coeur, then left the turistas in the dust by circling around the back of this great church to the Montmartre neighborhoods. Three hours in Montmartre and another two at my go-to, largely unpublicized park -- parc de Butte Chaumont, just east of Montmartre.

Broke up the afternoon with a stop at a favorite small bar/restaurant, where I had a glass of bordeaux and a plate of cholesterol for 10 Euros. I won't eat cheese again until I've had five Lipitors. Seven years ago, 10 Euros was about $8.50. It's now about $15 and, even when you're damning the torpedos and the exchange rate, you think about it. Because there are so many small hotels in this city, because the Metro is so inexpensive and because you can spend as little or as much as you like to dine, I'd never considered Paris an expensive city. The exchange rate has altered that. But. . .

It's still Paris, The parks and the sidewalks are free, the weather is in the 80s and where else would you rather be?"

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Some thoughts:

This stone is hanging around longer than Hillary Clinton.

Pain is especially annoying for writers because it's so difficult to describe. In the hospital they, wisely, take it out of the realm of language and put it into that of numbers: 1-10.

I've discovered a great way to get rid of telemarketers: Tell them you're having a kidney stone attack. They immediately apologize for bothering you and wish you well. Try it the next time somebody interrupts your dinner.

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May 6 was always a special day when I was growing up because it was Willie Mays' birthday. (Today the greatest baseball player who ever lived turns 77.)

In Phillipsburg, NJ, in the 1960s you were either a Yankees fan or a Phillies fan (like my parents, my brothers). I was the exception: a diehard San Francisco Giants fan.

The reason was number 24, the "Say Hey" kid. What was amazing about Mays, even back in those days, was his all-roundedness: he could field, he could steal bases (unlike a certain Yankee slugger), he could hit for power, he could hit for percentage. Whenever he stepped up to the plate, or got on base, or zeroed in on a fly ball, you felt the energy level rise.

One September, perhaps in 7th grade, I returned to school and saw a postcard on a girl's desk of Candlestick Park, where my beloved Giants played. Her family had taken her to San Francisco for vacation. I, as every summer, had been to the Jersey shore. I had never envied someone so much. The idea of going to San Francisco - the city of cable cars, Rice-a- Roni, Willie Mays - was something I could hardly fathom.

So I grew up longing for someplace else. I went to Europe five times before I ever saw California, and when I finally visited the city on the bay, in 1985, Willie Mays was long retired. You didn't dare ask for Rice-a-Roni. I had returned to the faith and become a Phillies fan. But I walked the hills with an almost uncontrollable feeling of joy, disbelief, and gratitude. The emotions you want on every journey.

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Yesterday I left the office early and went home to work on my new memoir about a man's heroic battle with his kidney stone, tentatively titled "Drink, Pee, Scream."

But, concerned about finding the right publisher, I put it aside and picked up Ryszard Kapuscinski's Travels with Herodotus. I slipped on some Bach arias and went out to read on the balcony. It was a gorgeous spring afternoon, one of our last before humidity comes in for its six-month visit.

And as I sat there, listening to the exquisite voice of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, reading about Kapuscinski's first visit to Egypt, I thought: This is what everyone needs once in a while - a break from the world, a moment to sit, removed from all responsibilities, pressures, demands. A time to appreciate being alive.

Later in the day I got a call from my friend David. I asked him if he'd ever had a kidney stone, and he said, yes, once, on an airplane. He described the experience - the pain, the confinement, the sweating, the stares from fellow passengers - and said that since then he has never flown without some morphine handy.

The next time I'm uncomfortable in coach (with luck, this Friday), I'm going to say to myself: I could be having a kidney stone attack. This should do more than the reinstatement of meal service to make me feel better.

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You gotta love this country.

The USA, that is.

Yes, I love Mexico too. Been there three times: a long weekend in Mexico City, a week of English teaching in Guanajuato (one of the world's loveliest college towns), a drive through the Yucatan, from Merida to Cancun (where all the students in Guanajuato dreamed of spending their vacations).

But back to the U.S. What other country takes the holidays of its immigrants and turns them into grand celebrations? Not just that, we take holidays that are pretty subdued in their countries of origin and make them all-inclusive parties.

St. Patrick's Day was always a sober day of church-going in Ireland, just as Cinco de Mayo is marked mainly in Pueblo, the town where the Mexicans successfully defeated the French.

Our embrace not just of immigrants but their holidays is admirable, but there's so much more that we can do. Why have we overlooked the English, and their St. George's Day on April 23? We have a lot of people of Polish background, and we completely ignore Polish Constitution Day on May 3. And with all the Cubans in South Florida, isn't it time we started celebrating Jose Marti's birthday January 28?

What are some others? Help me out here. With all our diversity, we should be partying - I mean, honoring the proud histories of our many peoples - every week.

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