Category: Essays

Recent essays are available here (with Sommelier Bill’s pairings of song and drink), and aggregated into the “Provence Chronicles,” volumes 1 through 3. For easier perusing go to the Substack page: Postcards From A Runaway.

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Suggested Song: Come Out and Play, Billie Eilish
Suggested Drink: Starbucks Pink Drink: strawberry, açai, coconut milk. (A Barbie favorite.)

Ian Taylor is a good friend, and he likes his games. Maybe it’s a British thing or maybe Ian is just the competitive sort, I’m not sure. He was my first good friend in Aix-en-Provence, some 16 years ago, crossing paths at Collège Mignet as our kids prepared for junior-high. Many a rosé-splashed afternoon followed, time well wasted in his cottage garden playing pétanque, darts, ping-pong, or something pulled from a deep box of board and card games.

Ian, I just want to sit in the Provence sun and get a slow, easy buzz on.
What are talking about old bean, let’s get a game going!
Sigh.

Ian is on to something: playing games offers deep benefits beyond just good fun, especially when enjoyed with friends. Forming teams and facing off builds the bonds and plants the memories that linger long after an evening ends, or a life in Provence fades. Some impromptu pétanque matches chez Ian were legendary, his French neighbors dangerously skilled at this Mediterranean obsession. (The Italians play bocci. Same game, different drinks.) No one takes the affable pick-up game seriously au debut; everyone is boisterously invested with taunts and praise à la fin. The rosé helps.

A summer afternoon pétanque match in Provence. The sporty Ian Taylor 3rd from left.

We allow ourselves to outgrow game playing, and this is our loss. It’s known to spur creativity, strengthen social connections, stimulate cognitive functions, and produce joy; all positive elements of longer, healthier lifespans.

How can I be sure? Mattel Corporation (of Barbie and Hot Wheels fame) has studied the health benefits of play and produced a fascinating report on its merits. They interviewed over 33 thousand people of all ages and confirmed, statistically, what we’ve always suspected: games and play feel good to us because they are good for us.

A circular chart with different colored circles AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Findings from the Mattel study on the merits of play. (Go to the study for a more readable image.)

This is all particularly relevant now, at this moment of phone screen social detachment and analog estrangement. For boomers, playtime provides a grounding rod to our earlier, earthier selves. We slow down and touch real objects, we share physical space, we josh and encourage, we get gloriously excited and giddy; just like our old kid selves. For everyone regardless of age, playtime provides a relaxation ritual in an accelerating world (quoting from the Mattel study). So very true.

It is encouraging to see young people embracing the joy of play as well. Board game cafes are booming across the US and abroad (more about that here) as people chose to turn off their phones and engage with friends across a table. The Game Parlour in San Francisco’s Inner Sunset offers over 100 tabletop options, plus drinks and food. It can pack out on many evenings, with reservations required. You might even spot my son Jess there, who loves board games and lives in the neighborhood.

We don’t all play in the same way or seek the same reward. Mattel submits that there are 6 play personalities, as outlined below. The labels alone may reveal your type. Refer to the report linked above to learn more about each. Regardless of our individual motivations, the benefits are mutual as the dices roll and the cards are flipped.

A group of colorful posters AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Mattel’s 6 play personalities.

“Games create a field of trust, safety, love, and empathy.” Couldn’t we use a bit more of that at this moment in time? Maybe a global summit held in Ian’s Provence garden? Okay boys (and the warmongers are ALWAYS boys), choose your teams and grab your boules, …. pétanque boules that is. Now, where’s that corkscrew?

Bill Magill
San Francisco

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Suggested Song: No More Mr. Nice Guy, Alice Cooper
Suggested Drink: The Sith Imperial Stout, Outsider Brewing

Personae non Gratae (n): Plural for a person who is unacceptable or unwelcome.
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary

An international man of mystery. That’s me, minus the mystery. I grew up with a big imagination in small town Pennsylvania, in a stunning sketch of pastoral beauty nestled between the Blue and Tuscarora Mountains of the Appalachian chain. Picture rolling green hills dotted with small dairy farms and commanding grain silos. This is God’s country, mostly Protestant, settled by the Scots-Irish and Germans. Paradise on earth, but limited in horizons for a hick kid full of wanderlust fuelled by Verne and Hemingway. What’s out there? Will it embrace me?

My post-Perry County travelogue included stints in Texas and then California, first southern and then northern. I was living in San Francisco in my late 20s when I met the exotic Alexandra, an exchange student from Paris getting her MBA at SF State. I tumbled, we married, kids happened, and my wanderlust went trans-global.

Alexandra was born in France to a Spanish mother. We made regular visits to Paris and Barcelona in those early years, and these were my first experiences in foreign lands. My language skills were impressively bad, but no matter. I’m a chatty guy, even in broken Spanglish, and Alexandra’s family invited me in with arms wide. He’s trying, isn’t that cute!

Later, we committed that our 3 pooks would have European dirt under their fingernails, and so moved to Provence in 2003. I was back to the pastoral landscapes and rolling hills of my youth; add in the Mediterranean lifestyle.

Through these adventures I’ve always enjoyed persona most grata status, albeit with some good-natured ribbing. In Texas I was that damn Yankee from north of the Mason-Dixon. In California, the Texan in Tony Lamas. In France or Spain I was the indecipherable American at your dinner table.

My old Tony Lama boots still step out on occasion.

A side note here: The French are truly bad at distinguishing English accents.

Oh, tu es anglais? was a common query at aforementioned dinner parties.
Non, I’d reply, je suis américain.
Ohhhhh d’accord, un américain! Oh là là!

To avoid confusion, I just started introducing myself as Bill the American. Bottles popped, merriment ensued.

Stormy admiration

The contentious rapport between French and Americans is a story that plays well on both sides of the pond. The truth is, however, that a lot of love and respect exists between the two cultures. Both are fiercely proud and highly accomplished along those distinct dimensions that matter most to each. Food and fashion and big trucks and fast trains and tech giants and bloomy cheese and good rosé on the cheap: I’ll let you segment out who excels at which.

French support for America stretches from Lafayette and our country’s founding through Desert Storm in Iraq. American GIs fought alongside the French in both world wars, liberating the country after the Normandy landing in 1944. US flyboys still do rotations through the French Air Base at Salon de Provence, not far from Aix, to share expertise and enjoy the southern sun.

Washington and Lafayette tour Valley Forge, 1777.

This all adds to a mutual respect, if sometimes begrudging. My circle of French friends in San Francisco bubble to the top of any dinner party list; always great conversation and excellent taste in wine. How can I help, Bill? Oh, just bring a bottle of something. Similarly, I got invited to a lot of French parties and events in Provence when living there.

I place great value in this French-American relationship. I get deeply upset with anyone or anything that fucks with it.

There are only so many insults, tariffs, threats to security, and unhinged tweets about total annihilation before a people get fed up and the red carpet gets rolled up. Russians became personae non gratae in Europe after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Yes, they could still visit, but the reception was, and remains, notably frosty. One is always curious, does he support Putin and the war? I’m guessing that South Africans experienced this disdain during the Apartheid years and Israelis are feeling a bit of a chill now.

I’ll be spending time in Europe this summer. I’m happy to call San Francisco home again, but look forward to re-immersion in a bit of French joie de vivre with family and old friends. As an American, will I be warmly embraced as I enjoyed in the past? By my good friends, yes of course, but by the odd waiter here or unacquainted dinner guest there? Putain, is this guy one of those Trump bastards?

I deeply disapprove of our president (as do 60% of my fellow Americans as of this writing) and consider his many actions this past year unexplainable, unconstitutional, and possibly criminal. I cringe at my inclusion in the Personae non Gratae Club, but accept that now I am, and will need a strong soap (or little white lie) to wash off that smell.

Oh, tu es anglais?
Uh, … oui, vraiment anglais.

Bill Magill
San Francisco

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Suggested Song: Give A Little Bit, Supertramp
Suggested Drink: Land of Happy cocktail: gin, balsamic shrub, Prosecco, lemon wedge.

I was at an Eid al-Fitr celebration in San Francisco this past weekend. It is a Muslim fete at the end of Ramadan, the festival of breaking the fast. There was a joyous scene bubbling along Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin, an immigrant neighborhood bordering the Civic Center where I live. Bouncing houses and shawarma popups, ethnic music and dancing, olive oils from Jordan and pottery from Palestine, an open air clothing bazar selling all manner of niqabs and hijabs and abayas (I’m learning). There were also numerous community organizations offering free services and looking for volunteers. I’m considering my look in a crossing guard vest.

Eid is to be honored through acts of kindness and generosity, of sharing meals with others and being charitable to one’s family and those less fortunate. Other religions have similar traditions: the Jewish Purim, Buddhist Vesak, and Christmas, of course. These benevolent rituals are effective happiness bombs for their followers. It is widely documented that acts of kindness and generosity are some of the lowest hanging fruit in the blessed tree of positive vibes. We get a much greater emotional boost from giving than getting. (For an insightful read on the proven power of generosity, enjoy this paper from the Greater Good Science Center.)

I caught up with an old friend last week, over an afternoon beer at the SF Ferry Building. His wife has been volunteering in a hospice care unit since both parents passed away recently, one shortly after the other. That was quite the emotional hit, understandably, and this act of giving was helping backstop the slide. My sister Cathy too used to volunteer at a Ronald McDonald House, which helps families in need of accommodations and support near pediatric hospitals. Her time spent with children, some terminally ill, could be trying but deeply rewarding. She had her dark moments, as do we all, and this was the best antidote. Cathy was a giver, as is my friend’s wife Susan.

My first 3 months back in San Francisco were spent at the big blue house on 6th Avenue and Irving Street in the Inner Sunset. I was offered a furnished studio there, at no cost, because I needed a temporary place while looking for my next apartment. How did this happen, to enjoy a charming unit in a beautiful historic home in a trendy neighborhood in one of America’s most expensive cities, … for free? Barbara Oleksiw. She’s a giver.

Aside from the large toy library of dolls, games, puzzles and other things Barbara organises and sets out daily for neighborhood families – take what you want and give back what you no longer play with – Barbara offers a community bulletin board, free monthly knife sharpening, and live musical entertainment during street fairs from her sizeable garden. While I was living there, Barbara invited a farmers market bakery to give away their unsold croissants and other delights from her street corner post market, and personally bought 50 roasted Costco chickens to donate to families in need one weekend. She just set up a table with a few friends and gave them away. Inspiring.

Barbara Oleksiw’s Big Blue House in San Francisco’s Inner Sunset.

My mother was also an inexhaustible source of kindness and compassion, and I was blessed. She looked for the best in everyone, never (and I do mean never) criticised, sought calm and compromise in all situations, and was effusive with her smiles and complements and gifts. On the give versus take meter she bent the needle, like Barbara.

The brilliant and the boors

Some people are brilliant suns and others boorish black holes. Most of us bounce in between; good days and bad. Then there are the deeply deprived and aggrieved, wholly committed to sharing their miseries.

Stephen Miller is a fine sample from that angry set of folks stewing at the sewer end of the give versus take spectrum. Let’s take a look. Everything Miller says, every scowl he casts, every immigrant community he demeans, reveals a man deeply unhappy with his lot in life: white and raised upper middle class in sunny Santa Monica, California, a graduate of prestigious Duke University (in just as sunny North Carolina), and political annoyance suddenly elevated to giddy levels of influence and power. The contempt Miller holds for all who contest his zealous beliefs is expressed in a twisted sneer that chills the soul and sucks the warmth out of all in proximity. Think Death Eaters of Harry Potter fame, or the hunched Max Schreck from the 1922 film Nosferatu. Miller is a taker.

So what’s the point here, … (it’s rosé hour, this needs to wrap up). Our place on the give or take spectrum is something over which we have agency. No one can be Mother Theresa 24/7, but we choose to call our better angels or send forth our demons at will. That Winnie was one of the happiest people on earth and also spent her every waken hour with the haloed doers of good deeds does not prove causation. That Stephen Miller presents as one of the angriest people you’d be unfortunate enough to meet and commits his every drop of sulfurous energy squeezing hope from all those in his orbit does not prove causation, but boy is that correlation compelling. Along what part of that spectrum do you want live? I think I know the answer. You know mine too.

Bill Magill
San Francisco

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Suggested Song: Everybody Eats When They Come To My House, Cab Calloway.
Suggested Drink: Any fermented grape worthy of your own home communion.

Communion (noun): intimate fellowship or rapport.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary

I had been eating out a lot since moving back to San Francisco. It’s fun to let someone else do the cooking from time to time, especially in a gastro mecca like SF, but I get great joy from tinkering in the kitchen. I also love to host. Sharing a home-cooked meal prepared with love for close friends who matter most turns good into great on all counts: the meal, the evening, and the company. It’s the power of communion.

My old kitchen kit arrived from Aix-en-Provence about a week ago, filling out the inventory of pots, pans, utensils, and gadgets I’d been picking up daily from Macy’s, Target, Cliff’s Variety, and other purveyors of fine homeware within a walk from my downtown flat. I’m back to roasting this and braising that while enjoying a glass or 3 of wine (darn it’s expensive here), while Coltrane or Chopin provides an evening soundtrack. Meals out are great, but give me the homespun zen of an evening encounter with a kitchen counter heaped high with fresh produce. What’s even better? Sharing the creation that’s all a’bubble on the stovetop with others.

The kitchenwares aisle at Cliff’s Variety in San Francisco.

I met a lot of fascinating people in Provence. Like Paris, Aix is a melting pot of Gaullist natives and multi-generational immigrants, plus a heaping dose of expats from all points on the globe. Reflecting on my time there, I realize that the closest friendships made where with people who communed on some evening at 7 rue Manuel (damn, I miss that place), enjoying (or suffering through) an alchemy of ingredients from the daily marché and favored boucherie. I would promise the starters and mains, and everyone else pitched in with breads, cheeses, charcuterie, desserts, and wine. The quintessential French dinner party.

(Also upon reflection [over a cold pilsner on the terrace of Anina in Hayes Valley yesterday afternoon]), it dawned on me that dinner communions chez Bill (the cause) begat the deepest and most durable friendships (the effect), and in that order. I didn’t just invite close friends to dinner parties. No, it’s that the people who came for dinner parties often turned into my closest friends. And this was quite a wide-ranging ensemble of ages, interests, talents, peccadillos, and kinks. Always lively, never boring, and rarely ending early.

What is it about these dinner rituals at home that build connections more deeply than an hour or two dining in a restaurant? I think it’s the shared service. In a restaurant we all sit while orders are taken, dishes delivered, silverware replaced, plates removed, wine glasses topped off, and check presented. Off you go now. This communion is elegant, organized, proficient, and performative. Dinners out can be wildly pleasurable, but not deeply communal.

A few close friends joining for a meal at 7 rue Manuel.

In our homes we serve each other, pass around plates, hand each other bread, fill each other’s glasses, forget something or other still steaming on the stove top, stain the table cloth, and then take turns bussing everything back to the sink where clean-up is shared (a couple of volunteers scrubbing and rinsing while the rest of us stand around drinking wine.) This communion is gloriously messy, unscripted, and authentic. As are the deepest relationships, right?

If you find yourself again changing cities or countries or continents you’ll want to find a local tribe. An increasing mountain of evidence shows that strong social connections are fundamental to longer healthspans, particularly with mental health. As we get older this can be more challenging. Consider laying out a dinner table for fun folks you meet here or there, with whom there seems to be a curious connection at first contact. This offer of generosity, this communion ensemble, may plant the seed for friendships that keep you happy and healthy through the many years ahead, … or until you again pull up roots.

Bill Magill
San Francisco

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Suggested Song: San Francisco, Scott McKenzie
Suggested Drink: Chinese Mai Tai at the Li Po Lounge (Dark and light rum, pineapple juice, and a mysterious “Chinese liquor”).

I’ve been delinquent in getting a new essay out since arriving in San Francisco. A change in amoureux messes with one’s creative rhythms, and while an urban divorce with visitation rights had been my plan, I’m quickly accepting the flaws in my thinking. What’s Plan B?

I am vexed by 2 lovers. When in San Francisco I long for the warm embrace of Aix-en-Provence. When in Aix I miss the urban energy of San Francisco. Both are real seducers but distinct encounters. One is a bustling ball of creative kinks and diversity, the other a charming postcard of Provençal splendor. One, an impatient center of bleeding edge what’s next and its innovators, the other a revered destination for the good life now and its disciples. If San Francisco is a stalking tigress in black leather, Aix is a demure gazelle in white linen.

Their distinctions can be contrasted as much as anything through food. San Francisco is the definition of culinary range. The Inner Sunset (my current squat) offers menus of French, Singaporean, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Eritrean, Italian, Mexican, El Salvadorian, Persian, Moroccan, Greek, and other cuisines packed around the buzzing 9th and Irving core. Banh mi, pho, glass noodles, kitfo, street tacos, sushi, ceviche, pizza, … what’s for dinner tonight? This neighorhood puts my tastebuds in hyperdrive.

Korean BBQ short ribs (Kal Bi) at Manna, the Inner Sunset, SF.
Korean BBQ short ribs (Kal Bi) at Manna, the Inner Sunset, SF.

Aix is a totem of French exceptionalism. The small Mediterranean city has over 40 boulangeries, most packed into the dense centre-ville. Some, such as Farinoman Fou or Hat’s, are considered among the best in France. The daily open air markets overflow with local Provence produce and flowers, honey and lavender. The rich sights and sounds and smells consume the senses. Okay, I surrender, give me a few of those. Yes, you can find flaky croissants and bustling farmers markets in San Francisco. No, as anyone from France will tell you, n’est pas pareil (just not the same.)

I have come to realise that neither affair will ever satisfy completely. A clean Provence break is not possible, nor is resisting San Francisco. The only solution is an open metromarriage, a polyurban arrangement, and that challenge is giving me purpose. Stay tuned.

An aside on big moves: the merits of patience and acceptance

With any audacious endeavor comes challenge, and this move-my-life-back-to-SF adventure has had its hiccups. I’m honing 2 virtues to cope: patience and acceptance. With a bit of effort we eventually get mostly what we need, and when we don’t, … well we can learn to roll with it.

My master plan for reentry went something like this: get reacquainted with the city (it’s been 15 years), optimize on a neighborhood, close on an apartment, fill it with stuff, find your groove.

It turns out I’ve landed into one of the tightest and most expensive housing markets in the country. (That whole doom loop thing? Yeah, that was so post Covid. Try to keep up.) Complicating matters, unlike the nouveau riche swarm of AI techies I don’t have a regular salary 3x the exorbitant rents (medium monthly for a 1 bedroom is now $3,670 as of this writing), and my US credit history is a blank page, having been in France for almost 2 decades.

I am getting to know San Francisco again, visiting old haunts like Mario’s Bohemian and the Tadich Grill, and finding new favorites, like Chez Maman in Hayes Valley (soon to be my permanent quartier). The neighborhoods I had optimized on have become p.r.i.c.e.y (!) and the spacious Victorian flat I imagined, … suffice it to say that expectations have been recalibrated. This took a lot of unit visits to appreciate (patience) and humility to absorb (acceptance). All good.

The Tadich Grill on California Street, SF. California’s oldest restaurant.
The Tadich Grill on California Street, SF. California’s oldest restaurant.

So, I have found my new neighborhood and home, a downtown high-rise apartment along bustling Market Street. Not the charming urban village I had imagined when starting this journey, but we have to be flexible; another virtue that has come in handy. Now the fun part: finding that new groove of favored cafes, restaurants, bars, parks, strolls, and flirtations that will color my days and evenings. The tender touch of Aix has spoiled me damnit. Onward!

Bill Magill
San Francisco

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Suggested Song: New Dawn, Gaby Moreno
Suggested Drink: Sidewinder IPA, Snake Lake Brewing Company

“To change one’s life: (1) start immediately; (2) do it flamboyantly; and (3) no exceptions.”
– William James

Snakes molt a few times per year. Their bodies outgrow the old skin, and shedding it helps remove pesky annoyances like parasites and debris.

I’m attempting a molt as the year closes out. I’ve outgrown this skin, and there is always debris to cast. As to parasites, I work hard to stay surrounded with allies and advocates, even of the corrupting kind. Still, there is value in refreshing the circle, for that’s not a zero sum game.

Snake Shedding Skin, by Alysha Dawn

I admit to a few moral failings, from the Calvinist perspective. It can be challenging to refuse a petit verre when offered, and then another. I can tumble for someone impulsively and irrationally, taking the scars and leaving the tears. (The chances of this happening increase proportionally with the number of petits verres.) I am a master procrastinator. Nothing motivates me to dust or do laundry more impulsively than a creative deadline. What else? Plenty.

Can we too slither free from our vexing debris? Unlikely completely. But starting the new year with a fresh unsullied skin, even if not surviving first contact, can be instructive. Some blemished bits and unhealthy pieces merit leaving on the trail. A new set of faults and flaws surely await our serpentine glide. Onward.

So, just how do we slip the skin? These 3 pillars provide the core foundation of authenticity and personal stability (or so I will argue over un petit verre): what you do; where you live; and whom you love. Dislodging just one can provide ample imbalance to loosen the membrane. (I upended all 3 with my move to Provence in 2010. Effective, but not sure I’d recommend it.)

Where I live

It’s normal to experience the occasional stall. The wind dies, the sails flutter, the sea calms, and there you sit. I have learned to accept these pauses as an excuse to do nothing productive until the wind picks back up (see moral failings above). It always has and I have had fun waiting. Recently it hasn’t, and so I’ve decided to row to a new lagoon across the sea. Maybe there’s a fresh breeze over there. Maybe I’ll grow a brilliant new skin over there.

Here I float in my new lagoon, typing a few words and playing some music when not dusting or doing laundry. C’mon you beautiful breeze.

Bill Magill
San Francisco

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Suggested Song: Bordertown, Bill Magill
Suggested Drink: Tecate Cerveza, with lime

Puta, Spanish for “Whore” (noun): “A person who is willing to compromise their integrity or principles for personal gain.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary

1980s

I was known to venture south of the border on occasion in my youth, crossing the Rio Grande into Nuevo Laredo or down the Baja coast to Ensenada. The unpredictable lawlessness of these border regions sparked the adrenalin injectors in ways not possible north of the divide.

I made acquaintances down there that still warm the corazón. I sought to be a safe after-hours companion, with little money and pidgin Spanish, but charming in my clueless gringo way. Nothing was solicited but trust and adventure. Rainée took me midnight dancing at the Ballroom Holiday Inn, where she kept a room on the manager’s tab. Claudia had a tiny live/work bungalow behind a La Zona cantina. We drank Tecate from the can and talked LA Olympics until sunrise. She aspired to dance the salsa for a gold medal. Never mind my teasing that modern dance wasn’t an official category. But Billy, mírame bailar!

The infamous Hussong’s Cantina, Ensenada, Mexico.

These were very good people with no good options. What they did on-meter was transactional and transparent; contrived but not shameful. I didn’t venture south for that and they appreciated it, but tenderness can be found in dark corners. Green shoots in squalor. Good people with no good options. Putas descontentas.

2025

Tim Cook and Marc Benioff (CEOs of Apple and Salesforce, respectively) joined a coterie of business leaders for dinner at the White House last week, and toasted Mohammed bin Salman’s red carpet visit to Washington. Salman had come bearing petro-riches, including $1T in US investments in return for Saudi access to America’s world-leading technology in energy, defense, and AI.

The 2 tech titans enjoyed honeynut squash soup and pistachio-crusted rack of lamb with a man who, according to the CIA, ordered the brutal murder and bone saw dismemberment of an American journalist (Jamal Khashoggi) in 2019. The Saudi government, when confronted with a mountain of evidence including an audio recording of Khashoggi’s final moments, conceded that, yes, it executed the killing. (Salman contested the CIA’s claim that he ordered the hit.) Also in 2019, 5 Saudi men confessed under torture to homosexual acts and were publicly beheaded. Common theater in the enlightened kingdom.

I’ve long admired Cook and Benioff. In contrast to a legion of increasingly brash and self-consumed tech titans, Cook and Benioff are reserved and stoic. They direct their considerable wealth toward charities and good causes heroically, and Benioff has been a great champion of my beloved San Francisco. But in the Trump multiverse, sharing polite dinner conversation with a murderous authoritarian is okay. I’m crestfallen.

Glass Apple wafer, gifted to President Trump by Tim Cook, August 6, 2025.

Here was Tim Cook, powerful leader of the second most valuable company on this planet, presenting (with stunning deference) a glass wafer on 24-karat gold base in August to our own aspiring authoritarian. “You have been a great advocate for American innovation and manufacturing, and I’m grateful for your leadership and your commitment.” The words from his lips were pure ingratiation; the look on his face complete descontento.

And there was Marc Benioff, exasperating admirers in October by backing Trump’s call for a National Guard deployment in San Francisco and adding, in a New York Times interview, “I fully support the president,” who “is doing a great job.” A virulent backlash provoked a rapid backtrack, but the damage was done. Yet another self-inflicted momento descontento.

An instructive aside

Ford Motor Company was the largest car manufacturer in the world in the early 20th century. Our man Henry was a brilliant pioneer of production design, supply chain management, and mass marketing and sales. He was also lauded in Mein Kampf and decorated with the Nazi Grand Cross of the German Eagle for complicity, through Ford-Worke, with Hitler’s war machine. Despite Ford’s stellar accomplishments and immense wealth, a vulgar little asterisk attesting to this Nazi complicity forever colored the legacy. (Public mea culpas later in life did nothing to remove the stain.)

Tim and Marc, you are good people. Unlike my gal pals Rainée and Claudia, YOU HAVE OPTIONS. Your net worths exceed $2B (Cook) and $9B (Benioff) in fuck you money. You can simply refuse to play the grovelling game, turn down the royal invitations, and decline comment on the current administration. And if this most minimal display of moral backbone puts shareholder value at risk (I submit that it will have the opposite effect), then FUCKING STEP DOWN.

Your 2 companies have deep benches of talented CEOs-in-waiting. You are getting on in age and not indispensable (I know that is hard to hear, on both counts). Your shareholders will be just fine; you’ll be just fine. Your legacies will remain (mostly) intact, and those vulgar little asterisks can be avoided. Best of all, you will cease being putas descontentos.

Bill Magill
San Francisco

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Suggested Song: Take Me to the River, Al Green
Suggested Drink: AIX Rosé (A masterclass on global wine marketing.)

“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand
as in what direction we are moving.”
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I arrived in Aix-en-Provence in the fall of 2010. My son Jess arrived a month later and the twins the following year. It was the start of an era: the Aix-en-Magill years. As I close out this chapter and prepare for the movers, the nature of our eras begs for a glass of wine and a few words.

First contact

Kids can be our greatest ambassadors when arriving in a new town, especially as strangers in a strange land. They make first contact. We meet other parents through their new-found friendships. We enjoy culture-shock group therapy in the school parking lot, waiting for a pick-up. We convene for boozy dinner parties and let our kids run wild for a few hours, comparing their rascally behaviors like pirate scars. Oh you think your kid’s a handful? These engaging new friendships are chicken soup for the wandering soul and soften the landing.

Just another summer afternoon with friends in Aix-en-Provence.
Just another summer afternoon with friends in Aix-en-Provence.

A testament to the intimacy of bonds amongst true compadres is through the naming convention of said friends. Last names trump first names and nicknames trump them all, once that deep familiarity is reached. Each term of endearment holds a history. Chairman of the Board; the Bean; Max the Swede and Canadian Dave; Bongos Eddy and Dada, Parker and Finkel and Magill. In all cases the wives were equally as amusing (and kids suitably troublesome).

In time the kids grow up. Some ask to finish their high-school years back home, their parents dutifully join them, and an era winds down. This is the nature of expat communities: a constant churn as new families arrive and others bid their adieus. It can touch the left-behinds with melancholy, but also provoke a healthy consideration of next moves, to evolve in our own ways and not go stale. I’m beginning to feel stale. My 3 Magill bumpkins have taken root in California. I miss San Francisco. And so I’m moving on.

Let if flow

Life is not an immortal home set on a solid foundation. It is a Huck Finn raft floating down a mighty river. We have a rudder and some (self-deceiving sense of) control, but the current ultimately decides. The wide stretches are slow and calm, the narrow rapids exhilarating. Some inflowing channels, like new friends, sweep us on ahead, and some outflows pull us down unplanned bearings.

The serene Charente River, near my brother’s home in France.
The serene Charente River, near my brother’s home in France.

And so it is with eras. There are feeding streams and swirling eddies and new water churning with the old constantly. I mingle with the new and old here in Aix, some arrivals diving into a fresh era, others rewinding to a more contained stasis. We can be part of all of these, but our own personal eras remain singularly unique. We must lean into them, draw great comfort from them, and know when to let them go.

Adieu Aix-en-Provence, et à bientôt.

Bill Magill
Aix-en-Provence

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Suggested Song: I Can’t Help Myself, The Four Tops.
Suggested Drink: Remy Martin XO cognac. (To warm you up, all the way down.)

Dauntless (adjective): incapable of being intimidated or subdued.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary

My brother has started work on another home in France. Fixer-uppers doesn’t do these projects justice. The homes are reduced to little more than gangly frames, with interior walls knocked down, ceilings peeled back, floors dug up, and the entire layouts reimagined. Then the fun begins. The man is dauntless.

Where once stood a wall. Work begins on the new home.

What drives someone to madness? Captain Ahab was consumed by a white whale, Kurtz with a lust for absolute power, and Earhart to conquer the skies. As for Joe? He has a keen eye for crumbled possibilities and loves a big challenge. Add in equal parts (1) handy with tools, (2) a Scots-Irish work ethic, and (3) an allergy to passive retirement (two days on a cruise ship would cover him in hives), and you have the perfect propellant for a one-man wrecking ball and rebuilding crew.

NY Times reporter, 1923: “WHY do you want to climb Mount Everest?”
George Mallory: “Because it’s there.”

These projects aren’t motivated by expectations of grand financial reward (he’d be happy to take it). Joe’s last 2 remodels – in France’s Normandy and Charente regions – crafted architecturally stunning homes that sold at premiums to the purchase prices, but minus the costs of tools, materials, and hired tradesmen (divided over time and to the power of Joe’s physical labor) did not generate significant upside.

Nor has any residence yet produced the perfect forever home perhaps Joe and wife Barbara anticipate when reviewing blueprints. This new project will be home #8 together, and she’s inquired more than once through through the years if this might be their final move. Definitely, until Joe spots another beautifully dilapidated dwelling that rouses the imagination.

The kitchen, installed by Joe, at the former home. Now a luxury bed and breakfast.

You might ask if he’s hoping to leave a legacy with his impressive set of rehabilitated habitats. The stoic will insist that he’s not. Brought into this world in ’52, departed in TBD, raise a toast to a life well spent, and done. (To quote the tombstone epitaph from one of our hometown’s colorful characters: Darn it all, plunked in.)

No, there is no Ahab obsession or divine provenance at play in Joe’s labors. No Ark building at the commands of a greater power. He enjoys doing it and does it exceedingly well. I think it’s simply something he cannot not do. The itch that demands a scratch. It’s his soul fuel.

Despite our brotherly differences in talents and interests, in this we share. I commit a lot of money and time to my music projects. A hefty investment goes into each album to pay for session musicians, studio time, rehearsal space, home recording equipment, guitars, keyboards, and other stuff. None of my releases have yet covered their costs, but still I compose new songs, plan new projects, and dream of possibilities.

The same can be said for my writing. Postcards from a Runaway essays have been published monthly since 2011, first on my personal website here and now on Substack. Good writing requires time and tinkering, and occasionally I hit that mark. After hundreds of hours of pen to paper over a dozen-plus years, total readership sums to a few hundred subscribers. Still, I write daily, chipping away on new essays and musical scripts, and publishing playbooks on life change and startup creation. Like picking up a guitar or sitting at the piano, it’s simply something I cannot not do. The ghost that demands you engage. It’s my soul fuel.

there’s a ghost out in the hall
a shadow on your wall
I’m a candle in night
see me dancing in the light
can you see me now?
– From C’mon C’mon, I’m Here!, on my upcoming album.

Joe would love to double his money on the new home I’m sure. He’s rebuilding it regardless. I’d love for an essay or song to go viral. It’s unexpected, but still I create. At least Joe’s brick and mortar triumphs will provide warm family sanctuaries for generations to come. My creative trace may dissipate quickly like digital stardust to the wind. Still, we’re lucky to have our soul fuel, our blind passions, especially post the career years. They may extend our days above terra firma (having life purpose is known to extend lifespan), and keep us up early and mildly interesting. And if not, we’re at least having fun before the darn it all, plunked in.

What you got going on?

Bill Magill
Aix-en-Provence

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To my loyal readers, I am in the process of consolidating websites and this particular one has its days numbered. The primary page for my essays, those copied here, will remain at Substack. You may want to follow me there, at no charge (ever).

Suggested Song:I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore, Woody Guthrie (performed by Billy Bragg)
Suggested Drink: Immigrant Pale Ale, Hophead Brewing

Is there any greater comfort than being home? Perhaps your humble hearth is not as Conde Naste as a sun-kissed villa in Tuscany, nor as opulent as a rambling compound in Calabasas. But it is infinitely cozier and more familiar, regardless of placement and volume. When feeding the soul in slippers and pjs, we just want to be home.

I’ve lived in a 2 bedroom flat in Aix-en-Provence since 2010. By American standards it’s humble in size but rich in character. Constructed about the time Columbus was bobbing around the Bahamas, my apartment’s high-beamed ceilings and terracotta floors evoke a genteel period when Aix was the parliamentary center of the greater region. Think powdered wigs and bodice tops, ripe for the ripping (as Flaubert would have us believe). While deliberating the Sun King’s impending visit from Versailles, my airy salon may have hosted a gaggle of countesses (that sounds sexist) nibbling on candied almond calissons and sipping fine champagne, pinkies extended most delicately. Okay, who’s doing the flower arrangements?

Huit Calissons d’Aix, by Elisabeth Hoffmann.

One’s home is more than a collection of rooms plus roof for the rain. It is our private refuge and space for healing. It is our expression of self. Photos there speak of family and friends and favorite holidays. Kitchens there feed loved ones. When the day is done and dishes put away, we lever back the recliner, dip the tea bag, open the novel or click on the remote. Ahhh, home.

The comforts of home are top of mind now (in my small brain), for 2 reasons.

#1: The flux of the world.

More than 120 million people worldwide are currently displaced from the sanctuary of home, according to the UN, a 6 percent uptick from the year before. That includes a full quarter of the Syrian population, Ukrainians and Afghanis by the millions, and refugees from dozens of countries across the planet too numerous to list. Despite the varying conditions for their transient lodging, from spare rooms to squalid camps, one sentiment is shared: a deep longing for home.

Add to that count two million Gazans, who have been hounded south, then chased north, then south again, and to where next? As of August, an estimated 92 percent of all homes in the strip lay in ruins, former occupants either dead or starving in tents. It’s thought that 49 of the Israelis kidnapped on October 7 remain hostage and alive (is that the word?) in the dark tunnels underground. All longing deeply, deeply for home.

That this purge would take root in the US was unimaginable just months ago. Now that root has taken, and with a flourish. As of the summer, ICE has detained 60 thousand undocumented immigrants (70% of which have no criminal records) for eviction. Stephen Miller’s stretch goal is one million per year (quite the ambitious Nazi), and ICE is tripling the number of agents by year-end to hit his quota. That’s a million moms, dads, sons and daughters, deeply knit into our communities’ fabrics, taken from their homes and given the boot. Last night was lemonade and T-ball in the neighorhood cul-de-sac. Tonight its suitcases and cots in a distant detention center. Like the Ukrainians and Palestinians and so many more, they will soon be crying for home.

The “worst of the worst” being rounded up in Camarillo, California, June 2025.

#2: The flux in my life: I’m leaving home.

Aix-en-Provence will be in my rearview come December, after 15 years of amazing joy and discovery here. More on why in coming Postcards, but I will surely miss this flat, its comically uneven floors, the drafty tall windows, its cheap kitchen appliances (that produced some stunning meals through the years), the family photos here and books stacked there, my daughter Stella’s daybed in the living room corner, and the faux antique tables and stands bought for a dime from the local flea market. (My sons and I lugged more of that stuff up the wide promenade through Aix than I care to remember. What, pay for delivery?)

I’m leaving on my own terms, taking what I want, and heading where I decide (back to San Francisco, of course). This is my home and I’ll miss it, probably long deeply for it when reading this article or seeing that show about Provence. But it’s my call and I can return when I want. How blessed is that in today’s world? Don’t catch me crying.

Bill Magill
Aix-en-Provence