Cantara’s (Social) Notebook

01. Best chocolate high I ever had was in Paris, at Angelina’s on the rue du Rivoli. For six American bucks you get a two-cup pot of dark rich molten lava—they call it African—with a side dish of fresh whipped cream. The after-effect is as deeply warming and satisfying as a good bout of sex. 02. Worst chocolate in my experience, Israeli. Too sweet and grainy. Plus it just doesn't seem to fit the terrain when you’re walking with a church tour down the Valley of Kidron. 03. European TV commercials push Kinder Buenos to mothers as a good and healthful treat for their children. Kinder Buenos come in tiny bars, just right for small hands, and are a light wafer and creamy hazelnut on the inside with a sweet milk chocolate covering. A grown woman will need a bunch of these to achieve any mood alteration. 04. A chocolate fix you have to work for: Mexican hot chocolate. There was a store on West Fourteenth in Manhattan that sold huge dusty chunks of the stuff. The idea is that you gra...

Click here to listen to the Resurrection Service in Bryn Athyn Cathedral for Virginia Childs Gyllenhaal, Stephen’s mother, who died at the age of 85 on Saturday. If you listen very carefully you can hear Stephen singing in the hymns.

Thanks, Ed G, for writing on your Gyllenhaal genealogy site a little about the history of Bryn Athyn Cathedral in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, the episcopal seat of the New Church —the church of Swedenborgianism , for you laypersons. [More about Bryn Athyn here, here and here .] SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____