Crest

 

 

Not the toothpaste but a small town in Southeastern France.

It's pronounced Kre.

We were driving home to Geneva with some trepidation. 

Would there be the predicted downpours? 

Would we be caught up in one of the demonstrations going on all over France? 

It was a beautiful sunny day as we drove up the Autoroute. Rick suggested we detour to Crest, which I'd never heard of. 

Why not go?

We passed through luscious farm fields and small towns on excellent roads. Some had roundabouts with sculptures. My favorite was one of a bronze farmer behind his bronze-colored horse plowing their field together in perfect harmony.

A garlic festival was advertised. We'd discovered in a major garlic-growing area. I never thought about the birthplace of my garlic which I chopped to add to my cooking. Now I will know that it was raised in farm country close to our second home.

Crest is a medieval town with a old tower built to protect the area. The attached castle was destroyed. The tower was once a prison.

We stumbled across a restaurant whose menu de jour was a tangine with a variety of veggies served by a single waiter who smiled and smiled even though he had far too many customers for one man.

What we didn't see, and we'll have to stop there again...an artisanal chocolate factory with an attached museum. 

I've often maintained there is something to see everywhere. Discovering garlic, sculptures and chocolate all in the area with a 900-year old village is just plain wonderful.  

www.plusbeauxdetours.com/tous-les-plus-beaux-detours/detour-par-crest-dans-la-drome/ 

Take A Ride With Me

I've been traveling the French Autoroute several times a year from Switzerland to Southern France and vice versa since 1990. 

Sometimes for a weekend. 

Sometimes for a couple of months or longer.

It's changed.

The 1990 toll booths and their cashiers have been replaced with funny little squares on my windscreen. I get a toll bill later. No worry about change or waiting in line while the person in the car in front to me drops his money.

The quality of the road has improved, but it was always good.

There are more Autoroutes these days. No longer do I get bogged down in Lyon. We can breeze around it.

Toilets no longer require my feet to dangle my body over a hole in the rest stops called Aires. Toilets are super modern, super clean, and many have red, yellow, green buttons so I can rate how the cleaners did as well as paper sheets showing the cleaning schedule. 

Not only can you park, you can picnic, maybe walk a bit looking at trees, flowers and sometimes snails. Some have exercise or play areas for humans and dogs.

Some have music, machine coffee and the internet. 

There's plenty of containers to throw your trash. There are routine clean ups for the slobs that don't. 

There's another kind of rest stop than the Aires. 

Those are places offering a variety from complete meals to sandwiches. French sandwiches have gone from an overly buttered baguette with a dry piece of ham to those with pretty good fillings. 

There was a period when McDonald's and Burger Kings flourished on the Autoroutes replacing the better chain Paul's, but I'm seeing Paul's coming back with less American chains. I can imagine the disappointment of someone taking one trip to France in their life to see Burger King or McDonald's.

There's also chain restaurants such as Autogrill which operates in 30 countries, that gives a traveler a chance for a good meal. They have a more French feel, even if they are Italian.

Mini stores allow a traveler to pick up food for anything from a snack or a simple grocery list for when you get home after their stores are closed. There's also regional souvenirs and books.

Some rest stops are mini museums to French performers such as George Brassens. Although not on the Geneva-Argeles route, on the aire to Toulouse, there's a history of Carcassonne visible from the Autoroute aire complete with posters. 

 

For the tourists traveling the Autoroutes, they can see posters usually in browns and yellows about what is important nearby. It could be the nuts of Grenoble, a chateau, a favorite composer or poet, special trails, bridges, the WWII French Resistance.

 

Over the last 50 years these signs have been increasing until there are at least 300 of them. Someday, we plan to take a trip and investigate each one between this or that place. It's a mini historic/cultural/natural tour of the country.

I'd love to get a coffee table, pictorial book of them all if one is ever printed.

 

 

 

Disgusting advert

 

 

Every November, I look forward to the John Lewis advert. Most are funny or heart warming or both. They capture the spirit of Christmas not the commercialism.

Not this year. Despite a star-studded cast, two brats are rude and greedy and reject their loving grandmother. The kids represent the worst of modern childhood.

Now if I were that grandmother, I'd be on my phone to my attorney to disinherit them. I would have any of my money go to kids who might need and appreciate it.

As for my daughter who raised them, I'd ask what I had done wrong in raising her that she would allow those brats to behave as they do.

I'd tell my daughter I wouldn't want those kids contaminating my home until if and when they can act as decent human beings.

The ad agency that created that advert missed the point.

To watch the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GT4DyMEYVI

 

I'm not a Capitalist but...

   

I may not be a capitalist, but that doesn't mean I'm a communist.

I am against unregulated capitalism where a very small percentage of the population on the planet hold all the wealth mostly gleaned from those that do the work. 

Jeff Bezos wouldn't have had his Indian wedding without hundreds of workers filling orders from customers. There is no reason that Amazon can't negotiate fairly with its workers.

I want regulations that don't destroy the air, water and soil. I want workers to be safe and fairly treated.

I believe business is necessary and it should be based on three factors: 

• capital
• workers
• customers

When any of the three are lopsided sooner or later businesses fail or cause damage that wasn't necessary,

Also good management is needed be it a small factory with talented management, a country with knowledgeable leaders or one employing hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

For the last two days we've been watching U.S. elections alternating with the French demonstrations, which were started by students fed up with deteriorating buildings and too few teachers. 

The students have been joined by French unions, believing they should be rewarded fairly for their contributions.

 

The causes are the same although I have yet to see media from either country make a comparison. 

• Unequal distribution of resources
• Greed of a few who want it all, some of whom will lie and cheat to get it. 
• A lack of empathy 
• Ignorance 

This not a problem only in 2026. Think of Marie Antoinette's alleged "Let them eat cake" remark. There is doubt that she really said it, but the quote has gone down through the ages. 

Maybe a cave man plotted to have all the saber tooth tiger skins in his cave and then lied the other cave dwellers to fight the people in the next cave for theirs, which he will keep from himself. Greeks, Romans, rulers of countries or tribes in the rest of the world throughout time have played power games.

I celebrated the U.S. election. Perhaps someday once again I can go to Boston or Texas for Rick's and my daughters and his granddaughters without fear of being detained. Too many people we know have had problems entering the U.S.

Maybe someday there will be honest and sane leaders. 

Watching U.S. politics from abroad, I was unable to believe all the lies, the ignorance, the people bowing to a false god, the corruption in plain sight. Much is still there.

I couldn't believe the alleged leaders not seeing, hearing what was going on.

I see hope in some of the people elected will be able to bring to reality a better world or at least slow the drift to a world for a few not the most.

Maybe someday the three-legged stool of capital, workers and customers will have a better world.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Free Write - The Pool

This free write was very different. Julia is still in Switzerland, but D-L and Rick didn't go to a cafe. They did the ten minutes in their living room. Next week, if all goes well we'll be in the same country and back at Martel's tea room.

Rick's Free Write

Ever want to scream but don’t want anyone to hear it?

You can simulate a scream, open your mouth wide but with no sound.

But there’s nothing quite like a full-body wail that shakes your entire corpus, right down to the toes. Maybe even vibrates delicate pottery. Scares the dog or cat into hiding under the bed. Enough to make children cry and adults cringe. Trigger the neighbours to call the police because they think there’s a murder in process.

But you’re not looking for anyone else’s reaction. Just the satisfaction of venting, letting it all out. No sound, no questions.

So you find a place and time when you can rattle the rafters in private. Like the bottom of a swimming pool. In the shower, directly into the muffling water stream. Under the duvet. In the car when you’re alone. In the middle of the woods (sorry, bears).

The things that make me want to scream are often electronics. Computer. Mobile phone. Television. Car. Or people who do cruel things to others. Abuse or kill children. Deny medical care. Steal, especially legally. Absurdly restrict rights. Politicians mostly.

I tend to be a slow boil. I can slough off a lot of annoyances. But eventually I reach a point when the kettle whistles. Sorry, then, to anyone in range of my voice.

D-L's Free Write 

Jack zipped up his white puff jacket. It was cold sitting in front of the pool which was covered with red maple leaves. Why management hadn't drained the pool, Jack had no idea. 

Jack looked at the building. All the flats but his were boarded up for the winter, their owners and renters returning to their city job. 

His wife Helen, her real name, and Hélene, her chosen name, was away. She was an airline stewardess and when she got in late with an early morning turn around, she stayed in Boston rather than drive to the Cape.

Jack sometimes went into the city to meet her. The last time he did that, he spied Beth, Wife No. 1 for 32 years,. She'd been his high school sweetheart, and mother of his three daughters.

Only two of the girls still spoke with him, furious that he had left their mother for a woman he'd fallen in lust with. The third daughter, was just as mad, but she felt that the problems were between her parents.

Beth looked good. She'd taken off the weight that she'd added over the years and had a new haircut that took years off her life. Helen/Hélene  at 28 was younger than both Jack and Beth.

Boy had he messed up. He wished he'd never taken that flight where Helen/Hélene came on to him. Of course, he could have said no.

He jumped into the icy pool, no longer heated, and sank to the bottom. He remembered taking great gulps of water.

* 

The next thing Jack remembered was a nurse standing over him. 

"Welcome back," she said. 

Not far enough back, he thought.  

Julia's Free Write 

Somewhere the sun was shining: just not in her corner of the world.

Of course, she shouldn’t complain – after all she was the one who no longer appreciated seeing the sun every day when she was a young adult.

Bu then she hadn’t understood the meaning of “eternal gray” at that point either. Early November and her world sinks below a bank of high fog. This makes for glorious pictures of the “sea of fog” if one rises above it – around the 1’500 metre mark.

But not below.

So escape was her motto, if even only for a day.

And what a day – she found the sun, the fall colors and revived mentally.

OK, November in the alps is a dead season with almost everything shut in the small villages. Something to stave off hunger in one’s pack is a necessity.

That still doesn’t explain the nightmare the flowing night: a man iced over in a pool!

Shades of things to come?

About the Free Writers 

Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, a weekly newsletter reporting the airline industry  top stories . 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/ 

 

 

 

 

Burto

 

Dr. William Burto often asked my freshman literature class if we knew (fill in the blank) some writer, musician, historian, even a scientist. We didn't: and it sent me scuttling off to the library to identify the person.

He could only be described as lanky with an interest in everything, a love he tried to pass onto his students. He succeeded with me.

Although I came from a family of book readers, they were discussed more for plot. 

In Burto's class, the first short story, was about a tree. He introduced the ideas of symbols, conflict, character development, the use of color. 

Burto was one of those people who opened the world for me.

I'd always dreamed about being a writer and journalist, but felt my real life was trapped in a small town New England. I would marry, have children and be a housewife. Those were pre-Betty Friedman days. 

Instead I've lived my life by accidental discoveries.

Art

When an art professor showed the class Dali's melting watches, I never thought I'd visit his Spanish home and museum. Nor did I expect to pass his statue in Perpignan, France regularly.

I also learned to examine composition, color, and history of the great painters and appreciate the work of talented local artists.

History 

It is one thing to read about it, but I never thought I'd be able to stand by the tombs of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionhearted, William the Conqueror among other lions of history. 

To be in the ancient city of Ebla, Syria where 17,000 cuneiform letters were discovered from 3000 B.C. or thereabouts. My luck was a local guide not only allowed me to go where tourists weren't, but he put me in touch with the letter's translator. I went to Rome where he lived. He  agreed to spend an afternoon with me in his charming book-filled apartment. 

I never wrote the book I wanted, because of Syrian wars, but the experience and knowledge will be apart of me.  

Reporting

My dreams of being a journalist were also filled by accident. Because of a connection with credit unions and a boss who was imprisoned, I ended up as an international correspondent for a financial paper. Later I started my own newsletter. In turn, thanks to conferences I was able to interview a number of world leaders and Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume twice. Most will not remember me, I'm sure, but I remember them.

Two have stayed with me.  

Being in Hume's presence and former Irish president Mary Robinson, former Irish President, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and member of the Council of Elders, I felt I was with great humans. 

I was told Robinson could give me ten minutes. She gave me a half hour and our conversation between two women was only interrupted by her need to give her speech.

During the conversation about the horrors she had seen as the High Commissioner, I asked her how she handled them. She put her hand on my arm and said, "My dear, my glass is always a quarter full." When things are bad, I think of the quarter-filled glass and my coping mechanism goes up.

Writers houses

I've been in many. Dostoevsky in Russia, Joyce in Dublin. Louisa May Alcott in Massachusetts. Whenever a writer's home has been turned into a museum, I try and go to see what his or her environment that provided the background for them to produce their creative work was like. (I even had a rock that touched Collette's grave at Père Lachaise Cemeteryin Paris.)

Would I have had these experiences if it weren't for Dr. Burto opening that door. 

Probably not. 

Although he taught me to read beyond the written lines, he taught me to open my eyes to many things I would have missed that has taken me places I would never have gone.

Spoiler: I still can't get thru Ulysses, but have read Joyce's other work. 

 

 

 

 

 

Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles

 

Chapter 28

 

Reflections

For people who choose to keep their babies, there needs to be support such as affordable, quality child and health care.

Only with those differences will the need for abortion be reduced.

But it will never, ever be stopped.

 I will never tell a pregnant woman what she should do. It is her life. It is her child’s life if she decides to have the baby.

I will not have to go through the pain of separation by giving up the child, nor the worry that the adoptive parents will not be good.

I will not have to raise that child myself, knowing I do not have the resources emotionally or financially to do it properly.

Because I am not going through any of those scenarios, I have no right to make the decision for any pregnant woman.

No matter what choice a woman makes, there is emotional pain involved. A Facebook Abortion support page shows the sadness and the relief in having an abortion. The women are too young to remember when a trained doctor and a clean clinic were next to impossible to find, combining the fear of dying to the emotion of not being able to have the baby under her current circumstances.

Nor do I believe that the government has a right to tell people what to do with their reproductive organs.

For the first time in the history of mankind there are almost-guaranteed ways to prevent pregnancies. It is only recently that married and unmarried women in the United States could legally get such information.

Often it seems legislators want to cut access to birth control along with abortion availability.

It makes no sense.

People have sex. Sex produces babies. Abortion is one way out of an unwanted pregnancy. If abortions are to be prevented, birth control needs to be regularly available and affordable. For people who choose to keep their babies, there needs to be support such as affordable, quality child care and health care. Only with those differences will the need for abortion be reduced. But it will never, ever be stopped.

 

 

Halloween/Demonstrations

Someone might think that the two have nothing to do with each other. Yesterday they did at least for me. 

 

 Demonstrations

Manifestations in French. As news junkies my husband and I watch news from many countries. The demonstrations started in France with students who were upset about the quality of education. 

It spread to other countries but not just with the students. Unionists, Yellow Jackets all are unhappy with the cost of living, housing, gas prices among other things including the lack of responsiveness from their individual governments.

It reminded me of 1968 when French students led by Danny Cohn Bendit, started protests that brought down DeGaulle. 

We've been watching transfixed. 

We are worried about our return to Geneva next week. National roads? Autoroutes? Leave early i.e. 5 a.m. to be home by noon before the protestors take to the streets blocking our path? 

Our sympathies are with the protestors, the peaceful ones. 

Life is out of whack. Costs have gone up, up, up in my lifetime. Corporations, dictators, billionaires have too much power. One doesn't need to be a Communist to know that without some regulation, those at the top will take, take, take. For example, coal mine owners forget without the miners digging the coal, it will stay in the ground. 

Considering climate change that might be okay, but the idea that weather catastrophes hurts everyone.A tree in a hurricane will refuse to fall on a rich man but select a poor woman.

And with climate change no one will have clean air and clean water.

Halloween 

How the day went  

When I moved to Europe in 1990 Halloween was nonexistent. Nary a pumpkin was to be found. Friends who worked for an American company did throw a Halloween party. The Swiss rented costumes. Americans made theirs. A cultural difference.

Over the years I was called on to explain what Halloween was to co-workers. I said that it came from Ireland and Samhain the ancient celebration for the end of the harvest. It also comes before All Saints Day, La Toussaints in France.

The combination

Between newscasts, many featuring sociologists, historians and financial experts trying to explain what was happening to financial markets, wars, protests and a genocide, we admired the village stores that decorated themselves with spiders, ghosts, cob webs, zombies, pumpkins. It was like my New England childhood.

Once no children stopped for candy. Over the years children in costume trickled by for candy, without saying "Trick or Treat" or even "Des bonbons ou un sort." They just hold out their bags. 

This year there were less little skeletons, witches and vampires than previous years. Parents stood back and watched. I talked to the kids, and they picked up on my American accent, I heard thank you in place of merci. Our village has not been part of the demonstrations. One has to go to nearby Perpignan for that.

Between the protest news and Halloween, it was a strange day. We still aren't sure when we are going north. We find the peace in the village a pleasure, an escape from the turmoil of the outside world that includes war and genocide, a totally corrupt government leading our birth country, which we are powerless to stop. 

Yet there's much to do in our Swiss home: medical appointments, social events, another votation. Will we approve a new tax to finance a new pension payment, the 13th, that we voted on earlier? We need to vote on military equipment exportation and that fireworks need to be forbidden. And one that I like, can a husband and wife file taxes separately? 

Our voting mail voting page will be waiting for us with detailed pros and cons to every citizen in the four national languages of their choice. We need to buy Auer chocolates for our Advent Calendar, go to a Christmas market. 

Sometimes I feel guilty at the simplicity of my life. No bombs, no soldiers, no genocide around me. I can chat with a child in a Halloween costume. I have enough because of choices I made not be a consumer swayed by corporations to buy things I don't need. 

Yet there are days, when the insanity of the world around me penetrates my consciousness and all I can do against it is to write a blog, calling attention to it.