We have just experienced Memorial Day, that has become a kind of signal that summer, in America, and some personal time is just ahead for many of us. For some of us it is family time, or a time for relaxation, for me, it always has been time off for growth.

As many of you know, I have a house in the South of France in the village of Mougins. A place where everything grows, trees, grapes, olives, and the very special local lemons, mandarin oranges and kumquats.

It is also the place where many artists, writers and photographers have lived, worked and grown. The villages around Mougins were the workplaces of Picasso, Dufy, Van Gogh, Matisse, Renoir, Bonnard, etc.. My next door neighbor and friend is Roger Muhl, one of today’s painters of choice. The air is so clear and the colors so vivid that photographers such as David Douglas Duncan, Andre Villers have lived and worked there. The region attracted writers as well. Authors such as Marcel Pagnol, Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene.  We are also surrounded by galleries and museums that feature local creative work.

And it is there, in my French home office, that I too work every day from 9:00am until 1:00 lunch time. My current projects are a book of my photographs of Africa and sculpture of the Dogon tribe of Mali, that are on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum here and The Louvre in Paris.  The sequel to “Being Direct”, to be published next year, tentatively titled “Being More Direct”. A novel I have been thinking about that has as its subject my life in advertising and the thinking that has accompanied it.  Then too, I have begun a book of stories that illustrate and describe life in a small French village that includes some local murders, thefts, love affairs, etc.

So for me “Time Off” has been and remains “Time In.” It is during summers that I studied philosophy at Columbia, acting and public speaking at The American Theater Wing, Photography at the International Center of Photography, visited with Jacqueline Kennedy, Jiang Zemin, and the great French poet Leopold Senghor, then President of Senegal and enjoyed long walks and conversations with my good friend Leonard Bernstein here and in Mexico.

So my best wishes to all of you for a happy and productive summer. Someone once said of roses “if you plant them well, they will grow beautifully.” So it can be with ideas, people, and life or so I believe.