A good morning

8:03 As I walk out my front door, my Catalan neighbour comes up to me waving his hands. He has a full head of white hair and has told me how he makes his wife breakfast every morning and how he loves her more than anything although they have been married over 50 years. He speaks so fast I have to ask him to slow down. Then he points to where a table USED to be holding some of his plants.

Rue Vermeille, my street, is considered the prettiest street in the village. Plants in planters line both sides of the narrow street and overhead wisteria and some red flowering plant make archways of colour and shade canopies.

However, this morning, several of the plants and their holders are missing. He drags me to where I once had two Spanish rectangular pots. Only one is there. I had bought them across the border in Bisbal, a factory outlet town for Spanish ceramics. Thank goodness I had only paid 5 Euros for them. The two big blue pots that flank my front door and are the same colour are still there, one over flowing with pansies, the other with patients still not in bloom. Other plants on the street are missing. A Catalan old lady is stomping up and down angry that someone took her pot of peppers and her pot of spinach that was just ready to be picked.

It is the second robbery on the street. About three weeks ago when I was still in Geneva, someone stole several of the black garbage cans. They left the ones with the yellow top for paper and plastic recycling.

8:15 I excuse myself to have breakfast at La Noisette. Today is marché day and I like watching the vendors set up their tables. Michel offers me the paper to read and it talks about Sarko's swearing in today and the beginning of the Cannes festival. Michel is a nurse in Perpignan and another regular. I see several of the English, who treat Argelés much like retirees treat Florida. I am one of the only ones in my family whose first words were NOT “When can I move to Florida.” I have never wanted to live in a retiree environment, although many of them are very nice people. I gravitate more to the artists who are still doing stuff...yes stuff...stuff that means something to them not just going from social event to social event and using the téléphone arab (gossip and grapevine)

Franck sets my hot croissant and baguette, tea and orange juice down. The butter is sweet. I know most of the people and I don’t get a chance to read my book L’étudiant étranger.

8:50 The marché is set up. The table next to the café is piled three two feet high with artichokes, about the size of a normal balloon. The centers are open and filled with iridescent purple spikes. I know from experience how meaty the leaves are when dipped in vinegarette and pulled through my teeth, but I pass. Today I am looking for melons.

The olive dealer, who offers marriage and romance despite having a wife and twin daughters, with his selections is busy proposing to another woman but winks at me as I pass by. I still have olives from Saturday.

At the boulongerie the line is short. The smell of yeasty bread baking floats around us. There is a sign that tells me about le coeur Catalan and I ask about it. The woman describes the honey and apricots in the bread and I tell myself to go tomorrow. They are selling it for the holiday, although I can never remember whether is it Ascension or Pentecost. France has more holidays in May than it seems normal days.

9:05 I stop at Pedro’s for tofu burgers made with mushrooms. He is a shy man and it took years before he spoke to me.www.virtourist.com/europe/argeles-sur-mer He is still unhappy that the writer described his shop as esoteric in the write up with the photo on the website above. We discuss the exhibition at the Gallerie Marianne where poets described the paintings done by local painters.

Back at the house I put my purchases away to get to work, grateful I make my own schedule. It has been a good morning.

Music stories

Music Story No 1.

I was taking a pair of too-tight brown shoes worn less than once and a backgammon game (I have another) to the charity shop and took the short cut through the building with the hall where the elderly go for lunch each day. This time music rang through the hall. An organ grinder dressed in a red and white striped crew neck jersey and a straw hat looking like he had been attacked by Yves Montand or Maurice Chevalier led the group in singing old French songs. I paused at the door and listened. I knew some from watching the variety shows on television.

An older man painfully made his way to me. “Entrez-vous,” he said.

I did, and despite being considered as part of the troisème age, the audience were anywhere from ten to thirty years older. I might be sprier but they could out sing me.

Music Story No. 2

He had a red clown nose, a drum on his back with Teletubbies La La and Po hanging off the back. A harmonica was suspended near his mouth and each step he took caused his cymbals to go ting ting ting. The English artist stopped him and said, “Musiques, s’il vous plait.”

The street musician complied and soon they were chatting in basic French. The English artist stood a bit taller each time the musician understood and taller still when he himself understood. The artist’s progress in French has been slow and he is unsure of himself, so anyone who speaks to him slowly and in simple terms he considers a gift. Finally the musician started to move on.

“A bientôt,” the artist said.

“See you later,” the musician replied.

“You speak English?” the artist asked.

“Of course, I am from Scotland,” the musician said.

Choosing verbs

I know why I adore my life. It was a busy day wrestling against time to get my newsletter out www.cunewswire.com and setting up interviews. However, I took three breaks, one to wander around the marché, one to have lunch at La Noisette (easier then cooking and washing up) and a third to meet with a rather new but dedicated writer who lives nearby. I traipsed to at La Noisette for a second time. Everyone should have a neighbourhood tea room around the corner.

We sat in the shade, the sky a royal blue, the 700-year old church across the street in various shades of ochre.

Sophie, the waitress as disgustingly beautiful as ever with her Catherine Zeta-Jones hair and Sophia Loren lushness, delivered une boule de café glace with chocolate sauce and one cappuccino.

The writer and I talked and talked about her new writing group, writing projects, my writing and a workshop I am planning.

However, I knew I was with a kindred spirit when she described a woman, not as beautiful, tall, thin, funny, but as someone who chooses good verbs.

The mirror

I have a friend in New York with whom I disagree on much and agree on much and we laugh at the differences but with respect. One of the biggest is that she takes shopping to an art form and I’m shopping phobic, although I admit double the pleasure of a sweater she persuaded me to buy this past summer in a specialty store in a medieval village. (I won’t tell her that shopping in a specialty store in a medieval village doesn’t have that much to do with shopping and a lot more to do with sharing of time and fun). She likes to hear when I go over to what I call the black side of consumerism so this blog is dedicated to her.

I bought a new mirror for over my fireplace. Did you hear that all the way to New York???? I confess not only did I buy it, the second I saw it I couldn’t imagine not having it, but then again it does fit one my criteria for a possession, it is beautiful and so original.

The mirror is round with a five inch leather frame. The interior edge is cut to reflect the design, which includes elephants and jungle plants. The colours of blue and green with touches of rust for fruit match the other colours in the flat. The clock that was there was moved to the side wall over the couch, the tapestry designed needlepointed by my daughter that was where the clock now is was transferred to the place where a copy of a grave rubbing of a medieval noblewoman bought decades ago on a trip to the UK was and that was put in the outside hall next to my front door.

However, I do make have to make it clear to one and all that these are Democratic elephants cavorting on the mirror not Republicans. I will be flexible on some things but siding with the war thugs in Washington would be impossible. I swear as I went to bed last night one of the elephants on the mirror whispered to me “Don’t forget to call Nancy Pelosi’s office on Monday and tell her that she can’t cave on the timeline

Vide Grenier

In France 1 May is a holiday. and I returned to Argelès to make sure I didn’t miss the Vide Grenier (empty attic) which is a giant flea market mostly with people selling their own stuff and a few professionals thrown in. I had no idea it would be so big. The area normally covered by the marché was full of blankets with everything from a carved apple to a stuffed zebra, some junk, some nice stuff. The Vide Grenier covered all the main streets and ran along the river and took up the parking lots.

As a non-shopper I loved browsing hoping for a copper fry pan that was tin-lined, no luck. If I had found a Clarice Cliff vase I would have been thrilled. No luck.

However I bought two replacement Chinese ceramic spoons to replace one I broke for 1.5 Euros. One broke before I got them home.

For 9 Euros I bought 10 wine glasses with blue stems to replace the mishmash I have been using and they co-ordinate perfectly with my dishes.

I did not look at all the places, it was too much. I suspect there were at least 500 sellers. And that doesn’t count the those selling kebabs, sauscissons, chickens, crêpes, waffles, etc.

I had planned to do another quick tour at the end of the day to pick up the Lilies-of-the-valley that are traditional sold on the first of May, but looking out at the red tiles of the house across the way I see they are wet. I suspect people are putting their wares in boxes and folding their blankets and their attics won't be empty once they get home and put the stuff back.

The blues

No not music, not sadness, but refrigerator. I stupidly forgot to leave the frigo door open when I shut off the electricity and when I opened it blue mould (a rather nice shade at that) covered everything. I quickly shut it again.

I concentrated on getting the wifi and TV working (it takes a while before the cable kicks in after being off for several weeks), my suitcase unpacked and made the executive decision to wait until morning. I wasn’t hungry (and after seeing the mould wouldn't have been even if I had been) since my friend Barbara had, as is our tradition, fed me. This time it was lasagne instead of the promised goat stew because the goat cheese man hadn’t delivered the goat. Chris, the artist whose house is www.virtourist.com/europe/argeles-sur-mer photo 7, joined us. He had lifted my suitcase up the three flights of stairs. My back thanked him.

Sleeping seemed a much better alternative but it is not a solution to the blues (mould). The next morning, I was ready to tackle the job. I doubt if my frigo has ever been so clean, and that leads to anything but the blues.

The mystery colour

Three times within the last 30 hours I’ve had the same discussion about a flowering tree. The flowers look more like feathers, the problem is the petal are a colour that has no name. I’ve heard it described as a very light salmon, white with a dab of orange, pink with orange mixed in, mauve and pink but none of them really works. It would almost be worth it to buy a set of oils and try and mix the colour, except that still would not give it a name, but at least I would know what went into it. What there is no debate about, is how pretty the trees are.

Michael Korda's Photo

The 20-year old Michael Korda book had been culled by the library and I picked it up from the pile under a sign that said, Take A Book. His photo was on the back. He was dressed in suit and tie and leaned against the side of an open door.

The glass panels of the door itself took up about 20% of the photo. Because there were trees filling the opening behind him I knew it was an outside door.
He wore huge glasses like mine. On closer examination I could see tiny lines making squares in his shirt. His resemblance to a horrible boss, a control freak, that I worked for once struck me but did not stop me reading the book.

His head was turned three quarters toward the photographer and his arms were crossed.
I could almost hear the photographer say, “Turn your head Michael. Now fold your arms. A little more toward me. A half smile, no not that much.” The shutter would have clicked and he would have broken from the position and the moment was caught in time for someone to see 3000 miles away and 20 years later.

That set me wondering. Had he just put down a cup of coffee? Was he late for his next appointment? Did he like/love the photographer? Did he change from the suit into jeans and sweater afterwards?

That is what photos do. They stop life. A family can be squabbling, a person arrives with a camera, everyone freezes a smile on their faces and years later, they might remember the day as a happy event. Or some may remember it that way. In most families two peoples’ memories of the same event retold makes the listener wonder if they were talking about the same thing.

In other photos the viewer can imagine the dynamics. Five members of the family are squeezed together, one stands apart. A mother cuddles a child who is stiff in her arms.

I also wonder about photos people keep on CD-ROM. What happens when CD-ROMs become outmoded? Or all the family photos on hard disk get eaten up? When fires destroy a home so often people say what upsets them most is the loss of photos.

I am not a picture taker overall, although I went through a phase of it when I lived on The Riverway in Boston. The number of pictures of my daughter in dresses makes one think that she only wore dresses, but the reality is she wore them so seldomly that we took her picture when she did. Still there are photos of all stages of my life, from being propped up on an overstuffed chair before I could sit, to tossing a salad in a Paris apartment.

Looking at photos of my childhood seem so remote it is like the life belonged to someone else.

Yet in most cases I remember what I did after that photo was snapped. I don’t have to wonder like I wonder about Korda’s actions when he broke the pose. Of course, the other people in the photos have different memories, but that’s okay.

Making choices

The black lab jumped for the stick his master was holding. In reality it looked more like the trunk of a young tree, a good three free across and probably three inches thick.

The master threw the stick as far as he could. It landed in the lake www.corsier.ch/default.asp just towards the end of the dock. The dog joyfully plunged into the water sparkling in the late afternoon sunshine, retrieved it and began swimming back to shore.

About halfway he saw a smaller stick floating to one side. It was less than a foot long and half as wide. He let the larger stick float, swam over to the smaller one, looked back at the bigger one, sniffed the smaller one, looked a last time at the bigger one and then brought the small one back for his master to throw again.

His master called him paresseux lazy. I called him intelligent.

Purple walk to the post

Purple prose, song Deep Purple, Movie and book The Color Purple, "When I am old I will wear more purple" T-shirt and book, purple is the colour of royalty, in Christianity it represents the sin of pride, www.purple.com, porphyrophobia is the fear of purple.

No one with porphyrophbia would have survived my walk to the post today. The colour was everywhere, the deep purple pansies, violets, star shaped wild flowers no bigger than my little fingernail and lilacs. And that does not include the wisteria www.gardenadvice.co.uk/advisor/plants/wisteria/index.html not just one like in the photo on the web site, but over a 100 lantern like globes hanging over a hedge with petals on each varying from almost white to deep lavender, which brings up the many names for purple: violet, orchid, mauve, lavender, aubergine, lilac, plum, wine, grape, amethyst...good Lord, all that for a mixture of red and blue.

Other colours existed, of course: yellow and white headed dandelions (which reminded me I still haven’t had a dandelion salad this year, but I will correct that at noon with a walk in our garden and a pair of scissors) green grass and leaves, and the first leaves were popping out on the grape vines which in the fall will be laden with grapes (coloured purple).

Musings

Yellow
One almost needs sunglasses with the yellow rapeseed fields near the house. Last weekend in the Jura it was fields and fields of daffodils.

Speaking of sunglasses
When I sat with friends in the Jura last weekend I realised that I was the only one without sunglasses and in fact haven’t even owned a pair for decades. Maybe I will pay for it someday, but I stopped wearing them years ago because it distorted and diluted the colours around me and that made me feel cheated of the genuine beauty around me.

Speaking of not having stuff…
It also dawned on me my make up shelf is not like other women’s. It is limited to foundation, blush and one box of hair colour: no creams, no lotions, nothing, nada, rien. Maybe it would be different if my mother and grandmother had not passed down good skin genes (as far as dry skin is concerned—the amount of acne over the years turned out to be citrus caused not gene caused). I didn’t need skin treatment I need not to drink orange juice everyday. Saved a lot of money on skin stuff and orange juice, but I doubt any financial advisor would recommend this is a life financial plan.

Indian costumes
After the brouhaha years ago by black women against Bo Derrick for corn-rowing her hair and co-opting their culture, I will admit I was a little self-conscious about wearing Indian clothing. But my Indian girl friend has brought me two wonderful Indian costumes that I now wear for their beauty and comfort. Last night I wore the pumpkin-coloured one (great match with my hair) to the Indian dance recital. I also stayed over rather than risk missing the last bus. This morning after breakfast I was amused that I, the Swiss-American was wearing an Indian costume, and she, the Indian was dressed in ordinary (although they looked great) slacks and a sweater. Neither of us felt our cultures had been co-opted.

Favourite Advert
Tarzan swings out of the jungle onto a Swiss mountain side and stops to milk a black and white cow as he sits on the Swiss stool that by tradition is strapped around his waist. He then drinks the milk. The sponsor is milk of course. I want to gag at that part. Just the thought of swallowing milk cold or warm makes me want to gag. He then smiles, looks out at the Swiss scenery as the cow flies off on his rope supposedly back to the jungle.

Torture
Okay, this blog is a mishmash of topics… Least anyone think I consider my adopted country perfect and my natal country without redemption, an article in the paper this morning accuses the Genevoise police of torture. I can get equally upset and activist in either case. Torture is wrong. Period. At least here the response is to put an end to it. It would be hard to be totally ashamed of both countries. Where could one run? A Cave?

Virginia Tech
I won’t deny how horrible the shootings were. We lost 32 citizens, young people with a future. 32 families will never be the same. The Iraqis have been losing more than that on average daily for five years. John Hopkins, not a shoddy university, estimates over 600,000 Iraqis are dead directly or indirectly because of the US invasion. 600,000 vs 32. Two hours of terror vs. five years of terror. One crazed killer vs. a crazed country.

Voting
For the third time since I became a Swiss citizen, I am voting. This time it is for the local mayor and 2 co-mayors. I did vote although there is no contest. Only three names on the ballot and for the designated roles.

However, my housemate caught me out when I said I wasn’t going to vote my one stock (life insurance company and it is the way the life insurance is set up). She’s right. I will drop that ballot in the mail too.

Jet d’Eau and an Yvoire memory
It is easy to miss a skyscraper high fountain when it is turned off. The fountain was shut off for seven days for maintenance. The last time I was on a boat in the lake (my daughter and I escaped to Yvoire www.yvoiretourism.com/accueil_en.html for lunch and a day on the lake, the boat passed so close that we felt the spray on our faces. The sunlight caught the water making rainbows in the air.

Joke
Tiger Woods, Jay Leno and George W. Bush were all on the same plane flying into the US and all three had forgotten their passports. (Okay it is implausible, I know but it is a joke.) The customs officials asked them to prove who they were.

Tiger Woods took his golf club and swung it and explained how to make a good swing. He was let in.

Jay Leno told a joke then explained how important timing was in comedy. He was let in.

George W. Bush said, “I don’t know anything.”

“Come right in Mr. President,” the customs official said.

Visit the Café du Soleil

It has a website. www.cafedusoleil.ch

I've talked so much about it, had so many fondues and other meals there, met with so many writers there...now you can visit it too.

A tale of two ducks

The Route d’Hermance is one of the main roads from Geneva to France. The villages on each side are bedroom villages (a smaller version of bedroom towns) interspersed with farms, vineyards and horse pastures for the many stables. The Lake and Alps are on one side, the Jura on the other.

Driving back from breakfast at Migros on the Route with my housemate a female duck stood on one side of the road, her web foot posed to walk across.

“I hope she doesn’t get hit,” my housemate said.

Then we saw her partner on the other side waiting.

In the rearview mirror we were able to see the two ducks reunited in mid air heading for the Lake.

The smell of water on Good Friday

I ambled (the pace my sore back is comfortable with) to the lake, a two-minute trip down a small path surrounded by walls of large moss laden grey squares of stone. In one crevice, four violets and their green tongue-shaped leaves were almost at eye level.

Violets have been my favourite flower since I was a child. The hill outside our backyard would be covered with them. My mother and I picked bouquets almost a foot across and put them in our pewter pitcher. Even at four and five I wanted to absorb the colour combination into my soul.

The lake glimmered blue-grey in the muted sun, a Manet day, not a VanGogh day. The Alps were hidden in mist. The lake has a certain smell, a clean smell that words don’t describe. The closest I can think of is the smell of sheets that have been sun-dried. I cannot find the words to describe the smell of mud in New England as the winter frost lets go of the earth.

Yesterday the lake had been dotted with white caps and was Coke bottle green. I learned that the Rhone runs through the lake and during the Bise the water gets churned up and changes colour. The person who told me that said when you fly over the lake you can see the Rhone passing through.

Ducks swam in the water so clear that I could see the ridges in their webbed feet. At certain angles the heads of the male mallards looked deep purple instead of luminescent green.

A few boats bobbed off shore. On one sailboat, the masts nude, a family ate a picnic. The cries of their baby floated across the water.

I found a place to sit and a small white un-coiffured poodle, Maisie, checked me out, found me uninteresting and moved on.

On a normal Friday, I would have been alone, but this is a four-day weekend and families were strolling up and down.

I found a perch and sat and watched at peace with myself and the world as I smelled the water.

The best cities and guilt

Zurich and Geneva have been named one and two of the best cities in the world to live in once again with Vancouver coming in right after by Mercer Consulting who does an annual scoring.

The first US city is at 28^th place, San Francisco, the next is Boston at 36^th, Chicago and DC tie for 41^st, Portland, OR is 45^th.

Once again I shivered at the pride of being Swiss, although I will never say this country is perfect. At least they aren’t under minding world peace and attacking other nations. I am underwhelmed with their Pharma and Banking interests. On the good side they have signed most of the international treaties for things like the prohibition of land mines and child soldiers, which the country of my other passport (COFMOP) has not. I don’t wake thinking that deaths of innocents are being caused directly or indirectly by my new countrymen as I often do with COFMOP especially after watching the news or reading the Middle Eastern papers with their graphic photos showing dead and maimed children. Instead of becoming immune I get more and more upset.

The glimmer of hope when Harry Reid said they might pull war funding next year helps. And he isn’t even one of the senators or house members that I have telephoned over the last couple of weeks asking them to end this war.

Still my American side is haunted in what has been done in my name, and the beauty and peace of my new homeland, does not irradiate the pain I feel at my rich and safe life as others are dying for nothing on both sides of the battle. My guilt at my enjoyment of my life does not stop the enjoyment bringing more guilt. Thus I will make more phone calls and still feel helpless and guilty.

Although the criteria of being one of the best places to live has nothing to do with war machines and military sales, it has to do with quality of life issues such as cultural, health, etc. I assume excitement and robust nightlife were not on that list either.

Casablanca

My hosts barely believed I had never seen Casablanca and set out to remedy the situation immediately thanks to the DVD. The film was made in my birth year and of course some scenes and phrases were as familiar as my left hand (or right).

So settled in with cushions at my back to protect it, I watched. Crossing borders is so much easier today, but what a shame that after all this time we are still fighting wars, sadly with the US as the aggressor instead of Germany this time.

Wonder what Rick would have said about that and would he have let Ilsa get away if this were modern times.

Ebay

I will admit I Google (acutally I use Dogpile.com) myself. I have found review of my books and other strange things.

However, the strangest of all was to see my novel Chickpea Lover: Not a Cookbook being sold on Ebay. Last bid $3.45

Geneva gives climate change new meaning

Calvin talked about an unpredictable God. After almost 17 years in this area, I am sure his theory was triggered because the weather is so changeable. Case in point: I left my Cosier Port home and it was a beautiful spring day, slightly on the chilly side, but the lake was calm and beautiful.

I went to the doctor’s in my old commune of Grand Saconnex on the other side of the lake. Still beautiful.

I was in the office less than a half hour. When I opened the door, the skies let loose. The rain looked like not so sheer, sheer curtains. I started for the bus anyway trying to stay under shelter.

Lightning less than one second before the thunder scared me. I know lightning has often struck the area but I made it safely to the bus, but not before being pelted with hail stones.

The Number 3 left Grand Saconnex for Petit Saconnex less than five minutes away. There the ground was snow covered.

Downtown I met my housemate for a movie. When we came out, the temperature had dropped even lower. The weather was clear until we got off the bus to walk to the house. Then the sleet began.

Geneva weather, you gotta love it…or not…

The chair is back

For years the area in front of the UN in Geneva was patchy grass, but for at least ten years there was a two-story three legged-chair. See photo: http://daveey.netapt.com/photos/europe/geneva

I could always imagine Edith Ann (Lily Tomlin) sitting there and saying, “That’s the truth.”

The chair’s missing leg symbolizes human legs lost in land mines. The chair was supposed to stand until every country signed the treaty. 138 countries have signed (but not the US).

The UN removed the chair while it turned the grubby land into a cement landscape. Ugly got uglier.

I haven’t been by for a long time. I used the number 3 bus instead of the number 5 when I went to Grand Saconnex where I used to live and when I went to my office, I was a block away. However, today late for a doctor’s appointment in my old apartment complex the number 5 came first taking me by the UN

Voilà…the ugly space had been replaced with a series of fountains and in the middle the chair is back.

Some people think the chair is ugly, but then landmines are ugly…and that’s the truth.

Perch and pups

The wall of the auberge restaurant had a trompe d’oeil of two black fuzzy dogs sitting under a window. On the right side a grey tiger cat stared down at the canines.

My writer friend and I ordered exactly the same thing. The salad greens, the first of the season from a nearby field were crisp and tasted of spring freshness. The filet des perches was, of course, from the lake.

As usual we talked about everything from personal to political and back again.

After finishing she showed me a near by nature reserve where we could walk in the air smelling of fresh earth and new grass. On this fine spring day we walked by the pond with ducks swimming. She identified some of the other birds. Wildflowers were everywhere. We stopped to sit on a bench, the trunk of a tree where one quarter had been carved out to make a seat. An elderly man, his French bulldog on a leash, walked by. The animal snuffled at us and he proudly told us of all her good qualities.

Under the blue sky with the snow covered Jura to one side, and the snow covered Alps to the other we continued into the woods. My friend explained there are still lots of wild animals, fox, deer, hares and boars. “Don’t run if you see one, just stare it down,” she said.

She had read an article that said because so many animals are protected in Switzerland, they find animals are moving in from France with no such laws. We pondered on how they knew on one side of the border they were safe from human predators. We wondered how they even knew where the borders were, although it was fun to imagine them strolling by the border guards and being asked if they had any merchandise to declare. We were sure they would have said no.

In the beginning there was fondue

The local paper did a history of fondue. The first recorded recipe was found in Zurich in 1699. I had always suspected that fondue was poor peoples’ food, but the story said no, because for years the best Gruyere cheese was exported with Lyon being one the largest purchasers.

Now, having a fondue, is one those wonderful Swiss stereotypes regardless of the section. French, Germans and Italian Swiss along with foreigners living here, consider it just one of those wonderfully social things that without life wouldn’t be quite as nice.

Movies a cure to backaches...not really but

Despite a backache I decided to see not one but two movies.

Mation Cotillard as Edith Piaf played in La Mome http://imdb.com/title/tt0450188 (US Release Title La Vie En Rose) was one of the most amazing acting performances I have seen. She had the speaking voice and the mannerisms down, but she went from a young girl to dying 47-year old wasted by abuse to her body. Of course the music was well it was Piaf.

After a short break I met former colleagues and we watched Herbstzeitloser, a Swiss German film that had us all chortling. Filmed in the Canton of Bern in a small village, a widow in her 80s deeply mourns her husband until her friends encourage her to change his grocery store into a sexy lingerie shop with her making the lingerie, shocking her pastor son and the more conservative elements in the village. Another friend helps the old woman set up an internet business and when orders are too heavy for her to handle she ends up teaching both men and women in the old age home to embroider. It is reminiscent of the film Chocolate. The actress in the leading role was 87.

Now the back pain didn’t go away, but since it hurt anyway, I was well entertained and distracted. Je ne regrette rien...

Pansies and Postmasters

Despite my aching back I decided to walk to the post office, although I could have used my housemate’s car. Ignoring pollution, I felt I was more likely to wrench the back behind a wheel. Besides, the day was incredible.

Passionately purple and golden yellow pansies blanketed the gardens and snowdrops almost hid the new grass. Everything shimmered as if jewellers had blown diamond dust over the entire countryside. Pink cherry blossoms, white apple blossoms and forsythia were everywhere, all against a backdrop of snow on the mountains.

My mission was “pour régler” the name on the mail box for my business account.

Our postmaster looked quite dapper in his brown suit, complete with vest, yellow shirt and brown and yellow stripped tie.

He is a slave to detail and dots every i not once but four times. I’ve taken rolled coins in for my savings account and even when they weigh correctly he takes them out and counts them several times.

Likewise he laboured over the paper work. Admittedly my handwriting is less than grammar school perfect. I am not sure it was a compliment or an insult when he said my French accent was better than my writing. I will say tact-lack and leave it at that.

However, as annoying his attention to detail can be, half of me wishes he could read English. I could use him as a proof reader, another of my weaknesses.

I voted on Sunday

It was Sunday, so I voted. This was the first time I had done it in person, because the other times I used the very efficient mail system. Voters get a package explaining the issues, a ballot, a ballot envelope and an identification card. The same envelope the package arrives in is reused and no postage is required.

However, I arrived back too late to guarantee it would get there in time to be countedl.

The election place is the local school. The young man, who measured me for my passport, was behind the counter and manned the ballot box which was yellow and red stripped reminding me of the Catalonian flag.

Even though the vote was already in the envelope, he wanted to make sure I had done everything correctly and sent me into the booth to check. I did, I had, and he took the envelope and slipped in the box.

One of the candidates for the town council was one of the women who interviewed me for my citizenship and had issued a negative report. Any guesses on how I voted?

Little Mosque on the Prairie

Having read about the Canadian series, I was hoping to get a look when I go to Canada next summer.

Nandita had introduced me to peekvid.com where I could watch TV shows etc. on my computer.
And Voilà there it was two episodes, but in looking at it I saw the source was You Tube which had several more episodes.

It's fun and pokes fun at own narrowmindness.

We aren't citizens but consumers

I came across this in my IWWG newsletter and it echoes what I have been thinking and saying People today are no longer citizens but consumers manipulated for an economic system that is in itself an artificial set up with its own rules and regulation. The question isn’t so much, what the hell are we are doing, is why are we letting if be done to us?

By Ethan Miller in YES

“The dominant story defines the heroes of our market system as the rational, self-interested firms and individuals who seek to satisfy their endless need for growth and accumulation in a world of scarce resources. In this story, we the people are just worker-bees and consumers, making and spending money, hoping for the opportunity to accumulate more, and perpetually dependent on the jobs and necessities that the corporate system allocates to the worthy. Citizenship is reduced to the active pursuit of financial wealth…A community of active, creative and skilled people without money of capital (or the desire to have it) are considered unproductive or backward…

Suppose we try a different story: Instead of defining economy as a market system, let’s define it as the diverse array by which humans generate livelihoods in relation to each other and to the Earth. Extending far beyond the workings of the capitalist market, economic activity included all the ways we sustain and support ourselves, our families and our communities. Peeling away the dominant economic story of competition and accumulations, we see that other economies are alive below the surface, nourishing us like roots. These are not the economies of stockbrokers and economists. These are the economies of mutual care and cooperation—community economies, local economies. They include.

Household Economies – meeting our needs with our own skills and work, raising children, offering advice or comfort, teaching life skills, cooking, cleaning, building, balance the check book, growing food and medicine…

Gift Economies—built on shared circles of generosity, volunterr fire companies, food banks, donationg to community organizations, sharing food.

Barter Economies—trading services with friends or neighbors, swapping one useful thing for another, returning a factor, exchanging plants or seed, time-based local currencies.

Gathers Economies—based on the abundance of earth’s gift economy: hunting, fishing and foraging. Also re-directing the waste stream, salvaging from demolition sites, gleaning from already harvested fields, dumpster diving.

Cooperative Economies—based on common ownership and/or control of resources: worker owned and run business, collective housing, intentional communities, community health trusts.

Community Market Economies—networks of exchange build from small businesses and cooperatives that are accountable to their communities through social ties, innovative ownership models and mutual support. Such economies not create to make large profits but to provide healthy, modest livelihoods to their participants and services to the larger communities.

The breakfast guest

Munchkin, the sleek, delicate, grey and white almost angora cat of my housemate, I suspect, pictures herself cast as a lioness in a Richard Attenborough nature film. She can probably see herself pounding across the plain and bringing down a zebra or wildebeest.

In Corsier Port zebras are not common and wildebeests less so, so she contents herself with smaller prey. Occasionally she goes airborne snaring a bird that has the audacity (or stupidity) to fly too low across her garden.

We have witnessed her prowess often because the office window looks out on her hunting domain.

In the house she reverts to a sweet-little thing. Therefore, it was not a surprise to enter the kitchen and see her sitting calmly, not in killer-strike pose and with no clicking of jaws as all cats are prone to do when about to kill. What was totally unmunchkinlike was to follow where she was looking. In her food dish a small brown, apparently uninjured mouse was jawing down her kitty food.

Did she issue a breakfast invitation? Did he turn up unexpectedly and she decided to be a good hostess? Was she fattening him up for a later snack?

Sadly, as bright as she is, her verbal skills do not allow for direct questions and answers.

Munchkin was invited to leave the room and the mouse was invited to leave the house, but not before a picture of the domestic scene had been snapped.

Sushi and Spice Racks

It is no secret whenever I get home to Geneva the first thing I do is eat sushi. The filet des perches, the jet d’eau, the tailleul bread and friends can wait.

This time was no different, except I was in pain and not from hunger. Three changes of train with too much luggage and a lap top had taken its toll on my back.

Unlike aspirin, I believe that sushi has magical qualities of healing, if not back pain at least a taste bud revival is guaranteed. However, rather than lug the stuff to Mikado or Bokey, I settled for the restaurant under the station.

Happy with my tray I sat down to eat, however, this time there was entertainment.

A man, probably in his late twenties, cute and probably a Brit from his accent, was sitting kitty corner, an ear plug draped from his ear to his phone.

‘I don’t care if the spice racks aren’t usually that size,’ he said.

For each bite of tuna, asparagus, shrimp, rice, salmon I learned more and more about spice racks and their measurements, their materials, etc. I never learned why the size was so important to him.

He finished his meal and as he left called Paul to report the spice rack condrum. Out the restaurant window I saw him wandering off talking to Paul as I popped the last morsel of sushi filled with avocado into my mouth.

I cry

As I was watching the morning news, there was an interview of the “raw recruits” bring sent to Iraq. A young man, who looked as if he should be shooting hoops at a high school game, was asked who the enemy was, and he had to think before saying the Iraqis. His voice raised at the end. He seemed to have little idea of why he was going.

A young woman was more sure. She was going to fight the Iraqis because “they hate our values.” Obviously she had heard the line but had never questioned why they hated our values or even if it were true. Obviously critical skills were not something developed in her school system and I suspect she knows even less history.

Both these kids may be killed or maimed. If they come back alive, they will see atrocities that no one should witness. Not only has the US failed them in their education, it has failed them in asking them to fight in this war.

And once again I cried for the horrendousness of what the US has done, which is far greater than anything that was ever done to us.

I cry for the American soldiers who have committed atrocities.

I cry for the American soldiers who have died for nothing.

I cry for the American soldiers who are forever wounded in body and/or soul.

I cry for the millions of Iraqi refugees who are seeking refuge all over the world. Sadly after destroying their homes, the US is doing little to help them. Neither is the UN.

I cry for the thousands and thousands of Iraqi children dead and maimed at US hands. Don’t ever try and tell me the enemy is bad because they kill innocents and children. So do we and more of them.

I cry for the stupidity of the people who believed the lies.

I cry for a war of choice.

I cry for the loss of rights.

I cry for the ignoring of international law.

I do not exaggerate when I say I cry. Real tears flow at the waste, stupidity, the cruelty.

My goal now is to contact every single senator and congressman by phone or email and tell them to stop the war. I always use the line ‘I am an expat and I vote’ whenever I contact our alleged leaders.

Will it do any good?

Probably not, but I have to. I cannot live with myself if I do nothing to stop this catastrophe however limited.

Not enough

When the Iraq war started my daughter was on airplane flying to Geneva. The next Saturday we were at an anti-war rally in Bern not the first time we had attended a protest together. Since then I have protested, e-mailed, signed petitions, forwarded messages to others of like mind, made donations, phoned congressmen on a regular basis on the war, on civil rights issues, on economic issues. I have done much of what Solnit (see article below) did, but it has not been enough.

Yes I know, I have chosen citizenship in another country, and yes I know it offers me a better quality of life, a social contract, safety, and real democracy, but I will never forget that my strength comes from my roots and I remain angry that those roots are being poisoned.

In the news I see photos of the demonstration in Washington. If I’d been in the US, I would have been among the crowd.

I will probably never have grandchildren, but I do think of the question asked of the Greatest Generation, “What did you do in the war Grampy?”

Like Vietnam, once again, my answer would be, “not enough.” I will not have to admit to future grandchildren I have failed as a citizen of a country that gave me so much.

Was I a good American in the time of George Bush?

Too many of us have done too little to stop the crimes of this White House. We are waking up but what took us so long?

Rebecca Solnit
Wednesday March 14, 2007
The Guardian

Was I a good American? How good an American was I? Did I do what I could to resist the takeover of my country and the brutalisation of my fellow human beings? How much further could I have gone? Were the crimes of the Bush administration those that demand you give up your life and everyday commitments to throw yourself into maximum resistance? If not, then what were we waiting for? The questions have troubled me regularly these last five years, because I was one of the millions of American citizens who did not shut down Guantánamo Bay and stop the other atrocities of the administration.

I wrote. I gave money, sometimes in large chunks. I went to anti-war marches. I demonstrated. I also planted a garden, cooked dinners, played with children, wandered around aimlessly, and did lots of other things you do when the world is not crashing down around you. And maybe when it is. Was it? It was for the men in our gulag. And the boys there. And the rule of law in my native land.

Before the current administration, it had always been easy to condemn the "good Germans" who did nothing while Jews, Gypsies and others were rounded up for extermination. One likes to believe that one will be different, will harbour Anne Frank in one's secret annex, smuggle people across the border, defy the authorities who do evil. Those we scornfully call good Germans merely did little while the mouth of hell opened up.

I now know the way that everyday life can be so absorbing, survival so demanding, that it seems impossible to do more on top of it or to drop the routine altogether and begin a totally different life. There is the garden to be watered, the aged parent in crisis, the deadline looming; but there are also the crimes against humanity waiting to be stopped. Ordinary obligations tug one way even when extraordinary ones tug the other way. The Bush administration is by no means the Third Reich, but it produced an extraordinary time that made extraordinary demands on US citizens, demands that some of us rose to - and too many did not.

Periodically, I would speculate on what was the most extreme and radical thing I could do to stop the illegal prison camp at Guantánamo; picture chaining myself to the gates of the Senate, becoming one of those activists who takes up residence outside the White House or takes over a TV station to get a message out. I wanted to do something so epic that it would turn the tide, stop the crime. Then I would consider that the best approaches were probably already being taken, by the heroic lawyers at the Centre for Constitutional Rights and other human rights organisations, and I would write another cheque and some more letters and feel a little futile and a little corrupt.

These days Americans seem to be waking up one at a time, groggy and embittered, from the hypnotic nightmare that was the Bush administration's one great success - spreading a miasma of fear and patriotic submissiveness that made it possible to mount an illegal and immoral war, piss on the bill of rights, burn the constitution and violate international charters on human rights and prisoners of war with widespread torture. None of the sleepers seems to remember that they were part of the legions who obeyed the orders to fear and hate - but we welcome the latecomers into our ranks anyway.

What took them so long? How could people believe that a fairly defanged country, one we had been bombing since the first Gulf war, was an apocalyptic menace in a world where most nations were well-equipped for mass civilian murder? A year ago, the turning point was marked by the comedian Stephen Colbert's volley of (accurate) insults delivered to Bush's face, in the guise of giving the keynote address at the Washington press corps' annual dinner. He was just aggressively ignored by the mainstream media. Perhaps Katrina turned the tide: the indifference, incompetence, and obliviousness of the federal government was so gross that its pedestal melted.

And there were others who were in resistance all along. I remember with admiration the Japanese-Americans who came out in the months after 9/11 to testify that they had been incarcerated en masse during the second world war, not for what they did but for who they were, and they were not going to remain silent as the same treatment was meted out to Arabs and Muslims. I remember the way that 20,000 of us in San Francisco came out to shut down the business district the day the war broke out, and the huge marches before and after. I remember the few congresspeople - mostly African-American - who dared to stand in opposition early on. I went to Camp Casey outside Bush's vacation home in Texas and spent a day with Cindy Sheehan, who gave her life over to stopping the war after it took her soldier son. Others did as she did. Some of them are my friends.

There is resistance. But if it were enough, the crimes would have stopped, the war would have ended. When it does and they do, some will have been heroes. Some will have been honourable but moderate, in times that did not call for moderation. And some will have consented, through inaction, to crimes against humanity.

· Rebecca Solnit is the author of Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power, and Wanderlust: A history of walking

The new bud vase

When I broke my much loved vase bought at George’s Folley in Brookline MA well over 25 years ago, I never expected Coca-Cola to help in its replacement.

Like teapots that have to be selected with expectations of a long relationship endowed with memory after memory, a vase is not a casual selection. Price does not enter into it. In fact the one that broke has cost under $5, but it had held the first spring yellow tulips on my hand painted chest in my much-loved Riverway Apartment, done justice to the bird of paradise spotted in the window of the Brookline Flower shop, and had been the holder of flowers brought by guests in anticipation of uncountable meals or bought from the marchés just because the apartment would be cheerier with flowers.

Thus when my friend, her daughter (the mom) and her son on visit from the US and I celebrated his birthday, the process began. Like me, they love Coke. Unlike me they no longer limit their intake. I used to drink it morning, noon and night and loved every mouthful. People talk about various diets, but I went on the Coca-Cola diet. By severely restricting the beverage I dropped eight pounds.

The mom had found almost miniature Coke cans as the birthday beverage, shaped like the bottles in the normal red, but decorated with pink stars, yellow hearts and a mythical golden city all very subtle. I got to keep my can which is more graceful than most bud vases I’ve seen.

Yesterday at the marché I found a red flower (I have no idea what it is) but it now stands in the center of my table in the Coke bud vase.

So if I tote up the pleasures beyond it looking pretty, I can add in my love of Coca-cola, the memory of the birthday party, standing with the son and mom watching the floats of carnival, getting lost looking for a hotel in Barcelona, walking through a château and some great conversations.

That’s a lot of memory emblazoned in the metal already and more to come.

Pac Man eats Palestine

Each morning I set my alarm for 5:30 to watch BBC’s Hardtalk, which features guests from all over the world all over the political spectrum, not just the same old same old that American talk shows use. Then I do my review of AlJazerra, BBC, CNN and France 24 so I start the day with a knowledge that the world continues to exist and how much trouble it is from a variety of perspectives.

Not that I can do anything about it, although letters to congressmen, newspapers and world leaders flow freely from my email. And I certainly like the hard hitting questions that shame that wuss Tim Russert. On Hardtalk you get the host contradicting false statements with proof and demanding “Why won’t you answer my question,” etc. especially when the guest wobbles and waffles all over the place.

This morning instead of the BBC interview with a Palestinian that was promised... Pacman ate his way across my screen.

It was BBC’s Click. The next half hour was a trip down computer game memory lane from the first Space Invaders discovered at my housemate’s boss’s house sometime to yesterday’s half hour break with Bubble Burst and Crickler which have replaced myriad games through the last three decades. Games don’t get in the way of what I need to do, but they have brought me hours of pleasure over the years. We won’t discuss the night I played Cubis until the early morning and froze my shoulder in the process.

Most of the show can be seen at www.bbc.com/click plus there’s an interview with my hero, the founder of Craigslist who isn’t trying to just earn money but to do a service while earning enough to satisfy his needs, sort of a techie Ben and Jerry’s. Now that’s a novel concept in today’s money grubbing world.

I will try and catch Hardtalk at a later showing.

The hostress gift

The hostess gift for my friend in Toulouse whom I was spending the weekend with was a puzzle. My first thought was a specialty coffee bean because I knew she had an old-fashioned, hand-cranked coffee grinder, but I opted for a geometric necklace made of nacre.

“How do you know she will like it?” my girl friend who owns the shop where I bought it asked. I felt it.

My friend picked me up at the train station. I was wearing my beige skirt with the multi level hem, black sweater and black boots. As if we planned it, she was wearing beige pants that grazed the top of her black calf-high boots and a black sweater.

When she opened her gift she laughed and disappeared upstairs. She came back down wearing the necklace AND the matching earrings her daughter, the person I think of as my French daughter, had given her for Christmas. The jewellery matched our unplanned uniform.

Memory meals and communication

I have known my French Toulouse hostess for 29 years. We met through her then husband. My two housemates and I were in Paris where the couple lived at the time. One housemate was giving a paper at the Palais De Congress. People had told us the French never invite you into their home. We were invited to their home for dinner. We arrived nervous and afraid of making one or many faux pas. We spoke no French. She spoke no English. The husband was fluent in both.

The first thing she served was moules. I am allergic to shelfish, and the husband understood. The second course was rabbit. I exchanged glances with my friends and opted for politeness over reservations about consuming Peter or maybe Flopsy, Mopsy or Cottontail. It was fantastic.

Over the years and many visits, I’ve eaten her couscous, carrots with a seasoning that made me want to lick the pate, chicken with olives and bacon, and one meal she whipped up from an empty fridge when we arrived shortly before midnight. It was eggs, spinach in a cream sauce that was so good I could have cried when I finished it. Picnics would have put articles about picnics in Gourmet to shame.

For many visits our communications were limited by lack of a shared language, although I had a great deal of respect for her creativity, her mothering, her work with the deaf, and Lord knows, her cooking. We tried and it worked, but it never reached the level I had hoped for.

Now many years later when my French comprehension is fluent, my speech is understandable despite grammatical errors and strange pronunciations, and she has begun to learn to English we can go deep into subjects. Combined with many memories and not just of food, time with her is delight.

How to Feel Old

When I first met him he was still a bump in his mother’s stomach. Today I sat at the table with him and his mother reminiscing over the many things we have shared for almost three decades, if not often then in many concentrated periods.

“One Two Three, May I have some Coca-Cola please.”

“Reseau.” I am still not sure of the spelling, but he thinks my pronunciation is better and I now know what it means. I was complimented on my French U, my French R still needs work but since I am from Boston my R needs work in English too. He now speaks excellent English but we went back and forth between the two languages also helping his mother with her English, which is far better then she gives herself credit for.

In my photo album I have many photos of him, one as a baby standing naked at the foot of a bed, riding bikes along the Canal du Midi, a range of others through his growing up.

I had lived with him, his sister and his father when I was in Toulouse, a difficult time for I had sold everything in the US, was trying to find work, learn French and write. I adored both he and his sister and when I had to return to the US convinced my dreams of living and working permanently in Europe were dead but knowing I had to help my mother through her death, I felt the meaning of the words “heartbroken” Leaving both him and his sister was just plain awful. I had a chance to tell him in a way I couldn’t the night I said good-bye to him as he lay in bed, a very bright nine year old, how badly I had felt.

None of these memories made me feel old. When I looked at him he has grown into an adult as handsome as I knew he would (Think John Kennedy Jr. with shoulder length curls). He is as bright as I always knew he was. His sense of humour is even sharper as a mature man.

Nor did I feel old because he is about the same age as his father was when our housemate showed up with the father the night after we moved into a catastrophe of a house we were planning to renovate and announced we had a guest for dinner. Dinner? We couldn’t even find the stove.

What made me feel old was the boy I met as a bump has grey in his hair.

Petit Dejeuner

Sun poured into the dining area. The terra cotta teapot gave off the peppery smell of Earl Grey tea. A warmed multi-grain bread was wrapped in a napkin and a samovar of coffee was heated by a candle. On a tray were sweet butter, honey and an assortment of home-made jams. I was still in my Snoopy PJs and my hostess was still in her night clothes. From the kitchen radio we heard a soprano singing in Italian. And we talked. And we talked. And we talked. And we agreed that we never felt richer.

Pre-read books

At university I preferred used books because they were marked up and I could see what the previous owner thought important. I only wish I could have known the owner to ask what grades they received.

When I lived on Wigglesworth Street in Boston, Hyram Manning, an eccentric but fascinating artist, used to write notes in his books that he loaned out. I loved his comments and still remember his, “not another French twist” remark. Books and food were the main topics of discussion over our frequent afternoon tea breaks where I learned Earl Grey mixed with gunpowder was wonderful. He gave cucumber sandwiches new meaning.

Thus I was pleased when I chose a book at my local English used book shop with light pencil notes and underlined words. The first reader was obviously French because the notes were in French. I could also see that the words the writer didn’t understand were more slang. She didn’t understand stand your ground, cave in, slimeball in the same way when I read a French book, I sometimes get stopped by the jargon.

I’ve reached a point in French books (maybe because I choose the least difficult) where I can go pages without missing a word) that I mark it and then go back all at once to increase my vocabulary, which is good if you don’t take pronunciation into account. I can mispronnounce several hundred French words.

The book itself wasn’t worth finishing. I didn’t care whether Penny ended up with Daniel or Christian, but I should have spotted it as a stupid romance (versus a clever romance). What I did enjoy was the pleasure of being in touch with the previous reader, although she will never know she connected with me.

I suppose I could go to the tearoom around the corner and regularly ask “Who learned what Slime Ball meant from reading (title)? Or not.

Lost in Barcelona AGAIN

Barcelona has some wonderful sights. What it does not have is decent signage. My friend and I were driving her daughter and grandson to the airport after a wonderful visit. I have always liked and respected her daughter and her commitment to making the world better. Her son at 11 is just one great kid.

To make sure they didn’t miss their Monday flight we took them down on Sunday. I have never been in Barcelona without getting lost. This goes back to when my mom and daughter were roaming around. Had my daughter with her unerring sense of direction taken over the path finding chore we might still be circling even if it were 24 years ago. This trip was no exception.

I will admit I am spoiled by the excellent directional signs in Switzerland and France.

Their hotel was less than a kilometre from the airport which we found with little trouble. We spent almost as much time looking for the hotel as we did on the two hour drive.

The reason?

Signage.

We would see 11 Septembre and an arrow straight ahead. Then we would come to a round about with four exits but absolutely no other signs on which exit would be. Or we would see Ronda Litteral with an arrow. We would drive and the road would fork into two equal roads with no signs.

The TGV is going direct to Barcelona in the future and I can see myself going down to explore the city, BUT I can’t see myself ever willingly driving there again with the exception of the airport. That is marked and if all else fails it is easy to spot planes landing and taking off.

teenage years redo and hi teched

I am so far out of the teens that I can barely remember when the number 1 was the first number in my age. But I remember talking on the phone and sharing music.

This was updated last night when I was Skyping with a friend in the states. We looked up stuff on youtube.com and I gave her some of my French favourites. We would bring them up, listen and she was able to translate some of them.

Then we started on finding songs that we used to sing when my daughter was little such as Tennessee Bird Walk. Mornings before work we would often dance around the house to Candy Man. My friend played many of the Kris Kristofferson songs. We saw him in concert in Asbury Park after a hurricane and the roof kept flaking down.

We went to the Sonny&Cher Comedy hour videos and recalled how we watched Sunday nights after Llara was in bed, the last breath of freedom before work on Monday.

Two hours+ on Skype and a walk through a shared past. Although the worries about money, work and raising my daughter, the tiredness from doing too much were always there, they were hidden under the laughter of all the silly things we did like making giant pillows and losing control of the filling which filled our living room as if we were in an I Love Lucy episode.

Somewhere over the Rainbow led us to the memory of a party for my friend’s father where we turned the dining room into the Emerald Café and had yellow bricks leading into the house.

Even then I think we knew they were the good old days and even if we are living the good new days, they are built on too many happy memories to count.

Interconnectedness or coincidence

Perhaps the thing that attracts me most to paganism is the interconnectedness of everything in nature. There needs to be no interpretation.

However, sometimes interconnectedness is another form of coincidence and extends to who we meet, where and how.

My Geneva neighbour left a pile of books for me to donate to the library. Not having time before i left, I did grab one Marquis by George Millar, a memoir of his advantages as a Brit fighting with the French resistance during WWII. I took it to Argelès to share with my friend Barbara (and yes I plan to take it back to Geneva to give to the library when I go home next month.)

Today I was working in her store while she was in Barcelonawith her visiting daughter and grandson. An elderly man came in. “You aren’t Barbara.” I already knew this and had much the same feeling when I used to answer the phone and the caller who wanted another member of the household would say, “No one is home?” Then I wanted to say "You are talking to a recording," and this time I resisted saying "I'm not, I thought I was." I am glad I resisted.

“I have something to show her,” he said. Then he looked at me. “Are you the friend who read Marquis?”

I nodded.

He brought out a black scrapbook larger than any coffee table book that was about two inches thick out of the reusable blue bag that grocery stores sell so we won't waste so many plastic bags when we pack our purchases. Inside he had pasted stories about WWII heroes, mostly obituaries that he confessed was one of nine such books. He turned the page to the obituary of George Millar. Next to it was a first day cover, stamp and all, signed by Millar. I don’t want to go into the possible connections between Geneva, England, Besancon during the war, a small French village and a person who met the author of the book and a person who came across the book by chance. I just assume it makes sense if you take interconnectedness and coincidence into consideration.

He entrusted the book to me while he went to have his hair cut. I found myself crying. Each page told a story of incredible bravery, risk taking and belief in something beyond the person. There were men, women, Poles, Czechs, Brits, Canadians, Americans. There were stories of the resistance, prisoners of war, hospitals and pilots. I knew had these men and women not existed and did what they did while I was still in diapers, I could not have lived the comfortable life I am living today.

Manufacturing Desires

In my daily perusal of international papers I came across this in the Guardian by Timothy Garton Ash: “Our planet cannot long sustain the momentous worldwide embrace of the manufacture of desires.”

When I and my friends bought the house on Wiggleworth Street, my daughter’s closet was miniscule and not deep enough to put a hangar crosswise as in other closets, but certainly large enough to hold all the clothes the original occupant had.

If we look around our homes we see riches that weren’t even imaginable until the middle of the last century.

Meanwhile we run around and fill our homes with junk that is eating up the planet. I remember an advertising campaign long ago for pantyhose that solved the horrible problem of a panty line when women wore regular pants under slacks. Was that really a problem?

How much "stuff" in our homes is based on desire created by outside forces rather than our own minds? How much "stuff" do we have that we never use and don't even remember we have?

Today on the news on France24 models strutted down the catwalk in Japan with designer phones. Now you don’t only need(?) just one, you need one for each outfit.

No wonder the planet is in trouble.

Note: interesting website www.allconsuming.org.uk/blog

I am writing again

Several of my friends mumbled about my new www.cunewswire.com interfering with my creative writing and it was true to a certain degree.

I was writing news articles, I was writing my blog, I was writing monthly articles for the English Magazine Writers Forum. I was teaching creative writing and editing novels. But I wasn’t doing my creative work.

In April I had “finished” Triple Deckers, what my agent wants to be my breakthrough novel propelling me from Chick Lit to a more substantial writer. My two published novels Chickpea Lover and The Card although published were still learner novels. Arthur Fiedler who for years conducted the Boston Pops and was adored by Bostonians always felt he had failed because he didn’t conduct a major symphony. As hard as it is to get one novel published never mind two in more than one country I want to write on a deeper level.

The book is about a typical Irish-American Catholic family living in Mission Hill in Boston and how the death of their son/grandson changes their perceptions of their relationships, their loyalties and their country.

I did not disagree with my agent who said TD still wasn’t there. I just didn’t know what to do next, although I can easily diagnose other writers’ weaknesses. I tried the old put-it-in-a- drawer trick hoping the words would rearrange themselves. Each word stubbornly stayed where I put it originally.

Then last Saturday I went to the Geneva Writer’s Group meet the agents session. Another agent looked it over and made suggestions that made sense. The sun came out on a rainy day, the orchestra started playing, I was handed a triple scoops of chocolate chip, chocolate and pistachio ice creams.

I have begun the revisions, changed the emphasis of my prologue, rearranged chapters, eliminated a character, know how to rewrite the grief scene. I still have a lot of work to do but I know where I am going again.

So to my friends who were not letting me not write but were humouring me when I said I was writing in other mediums until the end of some timetable that only they knew, I say thank you.

A little more distance

Instead of staying in my home I’ve been spending a few days with my Indian friends. This family, my Syrian girl friend and I all used to live on the same floor in the building next door where there was a lot of meal sharing (sometimes Sunday breakfasts still in pjs), cookie making, a belly dance lesson or two, raclettes and events too numerous to mention. No one missed anything big that the others participated in. There was sharing of frustrations but between us all the joys big and small prevailed.

Now we are spread out. I live across the lake and spend a lot of time in France. My Syrian friend is in Paris so time together with any of these good people is precious.

During my visit this time, we have been running our own Indian film festival with new DVDs he brought back from a recent trip to India, a greater treat because my host and hostess are quick to explain the subtleties of the culture that I would otherwise miss.

Thursday I am going to Paris to catch up with my Syrian friend.

As my hostess was standing at the stove preparing one of her vegetable dishes, the smell of cumin scenting the air, we were discussing my plans. “It is like the old days,” she said, “but instead of walking across the hall when you see us all you have to take a train.” Or two buses and a tram.

Misconceptions

His voice carried throughout the car on the Geneva-bound train and was broken only by his father’s hmm and un-huns. The father, dressed in a grey business suit, turned the pages of the paper he was reading.

Tired of sitting, the little boy popped up to greet the woman sitting behind and within a short time they were deeply engaged in conversation about the sun, cars and trucks visible out the window. He was bearing the weight of being two, a condition that would be relieved in April when he would be three. The point was emphasised with a third finger being added to the other two.

The woman gave him a paper and pen and he disappeared only to reappear and explain about the whale, boat, fish, castle he had drawn. He instructed her to draw a whale and a discussion about what whales do followed.

Every one nearby was watching and smiling, but the father just continued reading.

The little boy produced a small car and the woman had him play which-hand-is-the-car-hidden-in. He tried guessing both hands, but she insisted one or the other. He won. Then it was his turn to hide the car, and although the car was visible, she picked the wrong one which led to gales of laughter.

The woman then started folding paper into hats and boats that the child moved through the air and talked of storms.

I thought the father a bit uncaring but as we pulled into Geneva and were standing in the aisle with our coats and cases, he started talking.

“He never stops,” he said. “He barely sleeps.”

Hearing my accent the little boy switched to English. "Hello, Madam."

“We were in the states until six months ago,” the father explained. “I was a student.”

I learned they were African and on their way to visit the man’s brother in Gex a French town near Geneva.

As we started to leave, the little boy with the biggest brown eyes said au revoir or good bye madam to everyone who had been watching him getting the language right for their conversations that he must have overheard. He looked up at his father and hid his little hand in the big one. The father stroked the child’s closely cut curls and beamed at him.

I cancelled my thoughts of indifference and substituted the word “weary” and added “pride” and “love” as the child beamed back.

Grève at the Post

I am late sending my daughter her birthday present because I didn’t think I would find what I wanted to give her in France so I was waiting until I got home to Geneva. To my surprise I located it, waited for the latest cross stitch magazine to come out, bought the box with the coding and packed it up.

On my last day in France I hurried to the post to get it off to her.

No line…One man behind the counter. Then I saw the sign…

Grève.

Strike.

I love the French. They strike over everything. If it is Monday it’s the nurses, if it’s Thursday it’s the post, etc. I really respect their standing up for their rights.

I wish America did it more.

They seem to say:

“We have no health insurance, okay.”

“Offshore our jobs okay.”

“Non reliable voting machines, okay.”

“Medical costs out of sight, okay.”

Bleat, bleat, bleat.

The French if they even think some one might consider thinking about considering reducing one their rights they are out on the street.

Sure it is a pain at times, but leaders back down on bad ideas (and sometimes good ones, but in democracy nothing is perfect)

The man behind the counter and told me in French to come back tomorrow.

“I am leaving and don’t know when I’ll be back,” I said.

“I am sorry, it’s the grève. I don’t have any money,” he said.

“It’s prepaid and I have the declaration.”

He shook his head.

“It’s for my daughter’s birthday.” I was saving the story of why it was late but it wasn’t necessary.

“D’accord. But it won’t go out until tomorrow.”

“Merci mille fois (1000x)” I told him one day was better than weeks or maybe months. Then I gave him my blessing. “I hope someone does something really nice for you today like you did for me.

I admit it I am a...

I admit I’m a neat/clean freak slightly less compulsive than Martha Stewart and it is one reason I am a minimalist. Today was my monthly cleaning, the one where I wash under the fridge, behind the toilet, under the sink, etc.

That leaves the rest of the month to do cleaning chores as needed, such as wipe off a spice bottle that is sticky because my fingers were sticky when I picked it up, make sure there are no fingerprints on light switches or appliances etc. Again because the place is small it is easy to keep,

I do mind that the maker of my oven put on a decorative ridge where junk gets stored and it is necessary to go after it with a toothpick, but overall my oven despite two years of use is still new looking as is my food processor after five years of grinding, shredding and cutting.

And I give my dustpan a thorough soaking rather than a rinse. Before you call the white coats, let me say because I never liked dustpans I had an artist paint me a special one-of-a kind at a price that made it too cheap not to use but too expensive to not take care and mostly it gives me a smile when I use it rather than a groan.

Overall, because I have such little space I can do a thorough cleaning in about 1.5 hours including rearranging all my closets and making sure the floors are dust free.

Saying that, I know as I arrange things in perfect order, hang clothes in rainbow order, stack my lingerie in perfect piles, the first time I need anything, I will do a dig that would make archaeologists hire me on the spot – well maybe not because they go slowly. Professional diggers would hire me.

Although my surfaces will always be clean, although everything will be in its place, my closets and drawers become danger zones.

Now I sit getting ready to work in my spotless and well-ordered apartment and feel good and don’t worry about the closets tomorrow.