Dentist vs. Shopping

Two appointments, back-to back-days, four plus hours in the dentist chair. Since it was the same procedure both days, it was a bit like Ground Hog Day only better. 

As a teenager, dentist appointments were torture. No Novocaine. And I was uncomfortable when the dentist wiped his fingers on the paper bib over my barely budding breasts. 

Flash forward to my wonderful dentist today, despite his discovering the two huge cavities consuming two teeth under fillings put in by Dr. Horrible Dentist over 60 years before.

My dentist has the name of a city near our place in Southern France. He's Swiss as I am now. 

He explains what he's doing in his perfect English. He shows me X-rays.

Once in the chair, I know if I feel even a quiver of pain, he'll stop and give my mouth another shot.

Above the chair is a television screen. The nature film the first day was all about penguins. I adore penguins. The second day it was African animals. I was tempted to ask him to move his head as he bent over me blocking 10% of the screen.

There was music in the background, including the late Daniel Levy singing from the musical Dix Commandments, a favorite song.

Although he speaks English with me, I understood what he was saying in French to his assistant, a dental student. In the corner, a young woman in a white coat took notes. She was studying to be an assistant. His dentistry lecture was fascinating.

Instead of waiting days for a crown, I loved that he showed me a computer screen, where he designed the crown which was ready in less than 20 minutes. 

People question my sanity when I say I preferred that to going to a shopping mall.

I hate malls. They are basically the same, same stores, almost the same merchandise, stuff I neither need nor want. If I have to go to a mall, I want to go only to the store, find what I want within minutes. If I can't find it and no clerk is there to help, I try and figure out how to do without it and leave. I try not to feel sad at the precious minutes of my life that were wasted or the 30 things I would rather have been doing.

Often at a mall, my husband goes in. I read in the car, or have a tea in a cafe with a lovely pastry. I'll do a bit of people watching.

I know I sound like a COW, a Crabby Old Woman. One of the advantages of COWdom is doing what I want without needing approval of others.

Mimosa Triggered Memories

 

The Mimosa is telling me spring is on its way. The florist has a cart piled high with the flowers, sprigs selling for 3.50 Euros. If I would go into the forest, mimosa covers huge trees. One would almost need sunglasses to look at them.

Growing up in New England, I loved the seasons, especially autumn with all the bright red leaves. Winter with its snow for building snow forts and pouring hot maple syrup on snow to make candy was fun. And listening to the radio for no school announcements even if Reading was low on the list read alphabetically bring back good winter memories. My daughter had it easier when we lived in Boston with its B. Now it's online.

Daffodils, iris, roses, violets all took their turn in our garden.

Living in France and Switzerland the markers are different.

Southern France doesn't offer much in snow. But spring is marked with mimosa and artichokes, which I love. My husband? Not so much.

There are carnivals even in small towns, refreshing because there's nothing commercial about them but done by the locals.

The road to Ceret village is a sea of pink flowers that will turn into cherries. Marché merchants will have tables and tables of cherries in a few weeks. 

For this blog, I decided to post the photo of the cherry-decorated butter dish. We bought it on a cherry-buying-musée visit. Their museum has beautiful Picasso pottery, many impressionist paintings and usually some interesting exhibition.  

Bags of walnuts from Grenoble appear in October as do Christmas lights hung to turn the village into a Christmas fairyland. I know it's early but the same company does all the surrounding villages and has to start early.

I also love the Swiss season markers. If plan well I can manage to enjoy seasonal events in both countries. Someone once called me a cake eater from wanting my cake and eating it too. As far as reveling in seasonal changes in two places I do cake eating very well. 

When I first moved to Switzerland, I was told about the beautiful falls. Hmm... yellow leaves are beautiful, but I still miss the New England reds after three decades.

There's always the first fondues and raclettes of the season. The Canton of Valais has a special dish with the first pressing of grapes, apples, cheese and maybe sausage (locally made of course). The same area is a great producer of apricots in the spring.

Butchers and restaurants announce La chasse est ici. The hunt is here. As an almost vegetarian, I will always feel sorry for Bambi's mother, less sorry for the boar hanging at the butcher's. We have boars in France as well. More than once, they've dug up the small garden with its memorial to the soldiers who died in the wars.

Where I worked, when the Nouveau Beaujolais arrived, we would have a company-wide apèro with the first bottles and other goodies.

Geneva does not have much snow, but it is a short drive up a mountain find sit.

We can see more snow on Mt. Blanc and the Jura in the late fall. All along the lake Christmas trees of all sizes are for sale and Christmas markets with its chalets filled with handicrafts (I've found beautiful handmade pens several times. I swear I write better with them.)

In Geneva, there's the Escalade https://www.facebook.com/GenevaTourism/videos/1986569191851031/ where the city goes back to 1602 to celebrate the city defeating the French who were trying to scale the walls. Lots of hot spiced wine and hot vegetable soup which is a reminder of Mère Royaume throwing a pot of hot soup on the attackers, long enough to give the soldiers time to arrive. Chocolate marmites with marzipan veggies are on sale every where. 

Only in the first couple of months each year can we buy carnivals, a fried and sugared dough. There's some on my counter as I write this, The kettle is boiling for tea.

Throughout the year there are fêtes and carnivals from the simple Fêtes des Fontains in the Vals de Travers where neighbors decorate their nearby fountain to large celebrations like Bern's onion festival.   Zwibel Märit  https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=onion+festival+bern&&mid=43278CA44C30DD6041BE43278CA44C30DD6041BE&FORM=VAMGZCt. 

So many of the fests and festivals are a celebration of a country's patrimony but they attract people of many nationalities who enjoy the richness of shared cultures.

Free Write - If it Were History

 

Julia, Rick, and D-L take turns in offering weekly prompts. This week Julia made a change from the usual photo or sentence that we use to get our creative flows going. "Give me a word," she said to Rick. 

He hesitated, then said, "History." 

Julia worked it into a sentence, "If it were history..." 

Julia's Free Write

It was a beautiful sunny day, mid-morning and before recess. He was bored. Why, oh why was he stuck here, listening to his classmates drone on and on, reciting times tables.

It was a mixed-grade class, so these were the older kids: himself he was glad that he had finally caught the trick of adding 10 to any other number and writing it properly.

Then there was reading and writing. He had always loved books and words so that was almost fun. Even his grandmother thought that he wrote well – high praise indeed from someone so old that she hadn’t even had a tablet or cell phone when she was in school!

Spring was just around the corner so looking out the windows was somewhat distracting; watching the buds and leaves starting to form or unfurl.

Was it not almost time for the bell and recess!

Now, if only it were history: he loved hearing about the “olden” days; the re-constitution of naval battles or even medieval times and the clash of swords.

If only it were history: that he would enjoy.

D-L's Free Write

Dr. Goler* was called before the university president. "There's been a complaint about your course."

Dr. Goler tilted her head.

"You aren't teaching the approved curriculum," he said.

"I didn't agree to it. I showed the committee documentation that proved it wrong. They rejected it."                                   

"That doesn't matter."

Dr Goler looked at the president. He was a good-looking man in a business suit and a graduate of some podunk Southern religious  college.

His appointment?

It was bought by a hefty donation that pulled the college back from bankruptcy.

"Okay, I'll teach the approved shit." Dr. Goler almost never used bad language.

During her 2 p.m. Wednesday class, she taught the approved material.

Five minutes before the class ended, she told them, "Tear up what you just wrote. What I just gave you was fake history." She handed out a paper to them with her original lecture. "Real history, provable history, is what I just gave you."

She knew she needed to look for a new job.

Rick's Free Write

History is a record of things that happened and real people. Unfortunately, history is written from the bias of the historian. And subject to revision by other historians or politicians who control what gets cancelled or overwritten to suit their ideology.

But what if, in the future, possibly the very near future, almost nothing is real? If words and images and sound and video are non-real, artificial? And we can’t tell the artificial from the real?

Is it history? Or is it simulation? And if you are interacting with AI, for example an online chatbot avatar, is your side of the discussion or sensual experience real? Or imagined?

Some years back, I took my grandkids horseback riding. A real experience. But it was raining so I didn’t get any photos as keepsakes. My daughter remarked, “If it’s not on Facebook, it didn’t happen.”

We’re rapidly reaching a point where we can’t trust anything. Certainly not the government. Probably not social media. Maybe only our closest family and friends. And even then…

And now we can’t trust history.

*I used the name of a late history professor history. She was the best history teacher, I ever had.

Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, a weekly newsletter reporting the top stories about the airline industry. He is the author of The Robot in the Simulator. AI in Aviation Training.  

Visit D-L.'s website  https://dlnelsonwriter.com, She is the author of 15 fiction and three non fiction books. Her 300 Unsung Women, bios of women who battled gender limitations, can be purchased  at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/300-unsung-women-d-l-nelson/1147305797?ean=9798990385504 

Visit Julia's blog. She has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/ 

To become an Alien

 

There is a new move for the TSA to consider/call every non-U.S. citizen entering the United States an alien...not a tourist, not a business person but an alien.

Welcome Aliens - Not.

It's enough those from many countries need to pay an extra fee. Never mind the billions of dollars that are being lost.

If I were to go to the U.S., which I will not unless my daughter is dying, I would be considered an alien.

Î am also Swiss. I am also Canadian. I renounced my U.S. nationality because the U.S. with its FATCA laws made financial normalcy as an expat anywhere in the world, almost impossible, even something as simple as a deposit/withdrawal account. 

There is a great feeling of sadness. This is my birth country that I'm watching self-destruct, that are hurting its people and with its anti-climate stance the planet. 

I grew up in Massachusetts during what would become a golden age. Not that there weren't major things to be corrected, but I saw the passage of civil rights legislation and laws that gave me a better chance at the good things which as a woman were denied me. Climate problems were recognized. Improvement seeds were planted for international co-operation and some were budding. It was a start. 

The future is visualized by the current U.S. administration is for the white male world that will do anything to enrich themselves and the rest of humanity be damned.

The Hamburger that Wasn't

 

Sometimes I teeter on vegetarianism. Sometimes not.

Every now and then I eat at McDos, the French nickname for a well known hamburger chain.

When my daughter was a toddler and my mother took us to eat at a nice restaurant, my daughter threw a tomato slice over her shoulder. It landed on a bald man's head. 

I knew she needed to learn how to eat properly in public, but with a limited budget we went to McDos.

Living in Switzerland a few decades later, I'd be writing in my second floor bedroom. My housemate would be working in her basement office below. Infrequently on a Sunday, I'd get a text, "Wanta sin?" Translate McDonald's. We would.

That's all history. It's been a long, long time since I've eaten at any.

My husband Rick and Sherlock, our dog, were driving back from Southern France to our Swiss home, a six-eight hour drive. There are many good Autoroute food choices, but many don't allow dogs. To add to the hunger problem on Sundays many non-Autoroute restaurants are closed.

We were really, really hungry. We decided on McDo to buy something and eat in the car.

The drive-up was easy to find, and we stopped at the first to check out the menu. A voice kept ordering us to move up. At the next drive-up the order taker did not understand our French and turned us over to an alleged English speaker. At least he tried.

We gave up on parts of what we want to order, corrected the order more than once. We were told our number was 14, and finally advanced. Food was in my future, I thought.

I was wrong!

Next problem. There were no signs, on the ground or on the building where to pay, so we followed the line that might lead us to pick up. The car in front of us stayed, stayed, stayed after the cars in front of him received their bags from staff. 

I went inside to check. One of the employees told me where to pay, but the kid at the counter didn't want my money. He couldn't find any order 14. I had to go to the pay-up line outside. He gave me instructions on how to find it. 

My stomach was growling.

We finally found the right window, reordered because they had cancelled our order and paid. We received two bags marked 14 and found a parking place.

Oops...my smoked hamburger was a chicken wrap, barely edible, the French fries limp, the Coke watery. Rick's hamburger was passable. There was some other drink we didn't order. List 14 was correct, but the items weren't. 

We'd bought a Happy Meal for Sherlock. Our spoiled pup loves hamburger. He ignored it. 

All we could do was laugh.

We drove on, hunger abated. "At least there's a game with the Happy Meal," Rick said. 

Moving Day

Patrick, Bill, Elise, the judge, four-nine-year olds and their families are moving out of my French home. They are characters in my novella Sugar and Spice. I serialized them on this blog and on Substack. 

I was thrilled with all the positive comments I received. 

Lexington: Anatomy of a Novel, was published in 2022, but I will start to serialize it soon as well as part of the 250 anniversary of the birth of the United States. It is three stories. 

1. James Holloway, British baker and widower, frustrated with his life in Ely, England, joins the British Army. He did not expect himself to be in the middle of the start of the American Revolution.
2. Scottish historian and wife of the British Consul to Boston, Daphne Andrews, who in trying to fill the void in her marriage, lines up with her counterpart from the French consulate to investigate the Battle at Lexington from a modern point of view.
3. I love when writers tell me how and why they wrote something the way they did. The third part of this book tells the story of the writing of Lexington. 

When I'm working on fiction, the characters live with me. They stand next to me as I cut up veggies. They interrupt books I'm trying to read. Sometimes in the middle of the night, they follow me to the bathroom and back to bed, where they tell me what they should do and say the next day.

Today, I waved good bye to my sugar and spice friends. Then I looked around the corner where I saw Margo, Heather and Bethany. They were waiting for me to start my new novella, The Ring. Although I started it a couple of decades ago, I could never get it right. I realized the novel became lost in a memoir. Now with new characters, the base story is flowing.

Tomorrow we do our normal trek to our main home in Geneva. Margo, Heather, and Bethany have agreed to sit in the backseat along with Sherlock our dog. It's a six to eight hour drive with pee and lunch breaks. 

They'll tell me their ideas. 

I'll introduce them to my husband, also a writer and I'm sure he'll have questions for them.

The first thing I'll do in Geneva is to set up my laptop and get to work. The small flat will be crowded with three new friends, but we'll make it work.

Putin/Trump What is the Difference?

Is there a difference between Putin/Trump?

I'm not talking between dementia and non dementia. 

I'm talking about their war mongering.

Putin starts a war in Ukraine under the pretense it really should be under Russia control.

Trump has said similar things about Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. And although he is not the first American president to forcibly change a South American leader, he is the latest. 

Trump is busy sending aircraft off the coast of Iran. The U.S. has messed with Iranian politics (er oil) since the overthrow of its government long ago. Never mind withdrawing from a treaty that held the seeds of progress. 

Treaty Shmeaty! 

Who cares?

Frankly, I don't see much difference between the two men in their warmongering. Putin's slowness to expand his balliwick to other balliwicks is playing the long game. Trump might be trying to do too much too fast. 

Merriman Webster defines evil as "morally reprehensive, sinful, wicked."  Sending mostly innocent people to their deaths under horrendous attacks can fall into that category for whatever power and wealth they might gain can be described as evil. 

Russia and the United States are run by evil men, one of which is demented.

Does anyone win? Yup. Not people. Not the planet.  Arms manufacturers. 

Bondi's Contempt

If anyone had any doubt about The Administration's contempt for Congress and the American people, watch one of the many videos of Pam Bondi's appearance before the Congress discussing the Epstein files. The videos are all over the internet.

Although as a feminist, I hate saying these things against a woman, especially one who has attained position and power. I can make an exception for Bondi. I watched a spoiled, rude brat.

What did she do?

She talked over her questioners, which in itself is not unusual for a politician. What she said was often ridiculous mostly in contemptuous tones at too high a volume that shows no respect for where she was and more importantly why she was there. 

In a question about the victims, she replied how well the stock market was doing. 

Let me think. If I had been sexually abused as a child, would I think, "This violation of my body was okay, because the stock market is great?"

Bondi kept throwing in remarks how Trump was one of the best presidents ever, non sequiturs of the type like if someone ask sbout the weather and the response is, "there's a new film on Netflix" only there's no new film.

Many of the victims were in the room seated. I cannot speak for her, but why wouldn't she look at them, talk to them, agree to meet with them, something the DOJ has refused to do? Why? Why? Why?

She used the Trump trick of trying to demean others. One example: She called Congressman Jamie Raskin a "washed up failed lawyer."

Committee Democrat Becca Balint walked out of the hearing in disgust. She couldn't take it any more, she said. 

Apparently Bondi hadn't done her homework when she went off on a rant about antisemitism not knowing Balint's grandfather had died in a WWII concentration camp. Antisemitic? I doubt Balint is. 

A reporter was able to capture a photo of Bondi's "burn book" which had information to taunt committee members. I guess whoever prepared the "burn book" didn't know about Balint's grandfather.

Think of the people that have been named so far. If you have a daughter, would you want her to be raped by any of them? If you are a woman, think back to your teenage years or early twenties. Can you imagine having sex with these men?  

Sex between consenting adults within or without marriage to the partner is fine...but sex with minors is not. Sex slavery is not. That Epstein was involved in a sex trade, has been proven.

The people who were his "friends" and participated are allegedly your leaders whose decisions in government and business affect you directly or indirectly. 

Scum bags and perverts run  aspects of your life. They are supported by some in Congress. 

Are you going to do anything about it?